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VAGABONDING THROUGH 
CHANGING GERMANY 



Books by 
HARRY A. FRANCK 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANG- 
ING GERMANY 

A VAGABOND JOURNEY AROUND 
THE WORLD 

ZONE POLICEMAN 88 

VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES 




THE GERMAN SOLDIER IS BACK AT HOME AGAIN 



VAGABONDING THROUGH 
CHANGING GERMANY 



HARRY A/FRANCK 

Author of 
'a vagabond journey around the world" "zonk policeman i 

"VAGABONDING DOWN THE ANDES" ETC. 



Illustrated with Photographs 
by the Author 




HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 



A-*^ 

< 



JUL -9 ici2u 



Copyright 1920, by Harper & Brothers 

Printed in the United States of America 

Published June, 1920 

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©CU570592 



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CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

Foreword xjjj 

I. On to the Rhine . , , i 

II. Germany Under the American Heel 24 

III. Thou Shalt Not . . . Fraternize 52 

IV. Knocking About the Occupied Area 68 

V. Getting Neutralized 84 

VI. The Heart of the Hungry Empire 112 

VII. "Give Us Food!" . , . 137 

VIII. Family Life in Mechlenburg 159 

IX. Thus Speaks Germany 178 

X. Sentenced to Amputation 199 

XI. An Amputated Member 219 

XII. On the Road in Bavaria 248 

XIII. Inns and Byways 271 

XIV. "Food Weasels" 290 

XV. Music Still Has Charms 321 

XVI. Flying Homeward , . 343 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The German soldier is back at home again Frontispiece 

The downfall of a statue at Metz Facing p. 2 '^ 

A TROPHY OF WAR. A GERMAN MAIL-CAR SERVING THE ARMY 

of Occupation " id- 
American "M. P.'s" directing traffic in the town of 

COCHEM " lO 

The bridge of boats at Coblenz " 19 

American army automobiles before the headquarters of 

THE Army of Occupation on the bank of the Rhine. 

Across the river the great fortress of Ehrenbreit- 

stein, flying the Stars and Stripes " 19 

German civilians lined up before the back entrance to 

American headquarters, awaiting permission to explain 

WHY they wish to TRAVEL OUTSIDE OUR ZONE OF OCCU- 
PATION " 23 

American "formal guard-mount" in a square of Coblenz " 23 

German officers — in the days before the armistice . . " 30 

A busy time on the German front " 30 

An American "Watch on the Rhine" " 39 . 

Doughboy guards on a railway bridge over the Rhine, 

WITH their brazier COAL-FIRE " 39 

The Rhine steamers ran as usual, but they were com- 
manded by Marines and carried American Doughboys as 
passengers " 46 

American nurses entertaining Australian soldiers on an 

excursion up the Rhine " 46 

Forced to fraternize in spite of himself " 50/ 

There were some real artists among the American troops 

WHO made the Rhine excursion " 50 

The former Crown Prince in his official face, attending 
the funeral of a German officer and count, whose 
military orders are carried on the cushion in front " 55 

The heir to the toppled throne wearing his unofficial 

AND more characteristic EXPRESSION " 55 



ILLUSTRATIONS 
Hobnobbing with Belgian guards at the eastern end of 

THE DiJSSELDORF BRIDGE Facing p. 62'' 

German boys were more apt than not to wear father's 

old uniform " 62 

Back on the farm " 67V' 

Barges of American food-stuffs on their way up the Rhine " 71 / 
British Tommies stowing themselves away for the night 

on barges anchored near the Holland frontier ... " 71 
A ball-game or a boxing-match v/ithin the barbed-wire 
inclosure of the American camp at Rotterdam was 

SURE TO attract THE CHIEF SuNDAY AUDIENCE .... " 78V 

A CORNER OF Rotterdam " 78 

Coachmen waiting for fares at a Berlin railway station " 82. 
An American army automobile before the Adlon on Unter 

den Linden " 82 

Not von Tirpitz in disguise, but a Berlin hackman scanning 

THE crowd for POSSIBLE CLIENTS " 99, 

The MASSIVE wooden Hindenburg still stares down the 
Sieges Allee, but few come now to nail home their 

homage " 99 

Berlin taxicabs hobble along on Ersatz tires " 103 

Bicycle-riding is no longer the favorite sport in Germany " 103 
Posters tell Berliners when and where they can get six 

ounces of marmalade or a pound of potatoes .... " lie. 
An appeal for recruits to "protect the Fatherland from 

the menace of Bolshevism" " no 

A MEETING of PROTEST AGAINST THE PEACE TERMS ON THE STEPS 

of TEE Reichstag building " 114^ 

A funereal procession of protesters marching down Unter 

DEN Linden " 114 

A former German soldier selling American and English 

tobacco and cigarettes on Friedrichstrasse . . . . " 131 
A German Feldwebel, or "top sergeant," selling news- 
papers IN the streets of Berlin " 131 

Vender of turnips on a Berlin street corner .... " 135 

The "milkman" in a small town of the interior .... " 135 
A Sparticist shell made it possible for a few Germans to 

get meat without tickets " 142 

The appalling emptiness of the market-places .... " 142 
Even the seagulls followed the American flag when the 

food-ships came in . . " 146 ■ 

The Gothic thatched roofs of Mecklenburg " 151- 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The "hands" who toiled in the market-garden were not 

NOTED FOR THEIR STRENGTH OR YOUTH Facing p. 151 

The Handelsgartner and one of his employees .... " 158' 

"Heinie" and his two iron crosses " 158 

The Schwerin castle is perhaps the most imposing in 

Germany " 163^ 

A tobacco line in a German city " 163 

A corner of the ex-Kaiser's palace after the Sparticists 

GOT done with it " 167 

Germans reading the peace-terms bulletins before the 

OFFICE OF the "LoKAL Anzeiger," ON Unter DEN Linden " 167 

A coachman OF Munich reading the peace terms . . . " 174 

The German soldier is not always savage of face ... " 178 
The German's artistic sense leads him to overdecorate 

EVEN his merry-go-rounds " 178 

A street figure in German Poland " 183 

The village pump in the Polish section of Germany . . " 183 

A soldier of the new Poland " 190 

It needs only a pair of silver eagles on his cap to make 

a German soldier Polish " 190 

The Rathaus, or City Hall, of Posen " 195 

"Bismarck," typical of all the German statues in Poznan 

TO-DAY " 199 

Russian women of the "Battalion of Death" .... " 199 

This was formerly the "Bismarck Caf£" " 206 1 

Shop signs in Poznan have obliterated their German 

WORDS " 206 

A Polish woman of the country districts on a visit to 

Poznan " 210 

In the market-place " 210 

Polish women of the markets " 215 

There were eggs by the bushel in the province of Posen " 215 

Street-car conductors of Poznan " 222 

All males doff their hats as they pass this sign of their 

FAITH in Poznan " 222 

Cheese! Who said German Poland was hungry? ... " 227 

A peasant's house in the province of Posen " 227 

Munich was a blander, gentler, less verboten land ... " 231 
Soldiers examining the Ausweis of those entering a hotel 

used as headquarters of the troops that reconquered 

Munich " 238 



./ 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

One of the many detachments t^at freed Munich from the 

SpARTICISTS Pacing p. 238 

Military discipline was still strict among the troops 

HOLDING Munich " 242 

Troops entering Munich after the fleeing Sparticists " 242 
A "hard-boiled" German band-leader, with nearly twenty 

YEARS of military SERVICE " 247 

Soldiers of a Bavarian volunteer corps " 247 

Bavarian volunteers " 254/ 

A corner of Munich that was not popular during the 

DRIVING OUT OF THE SpARTICISTS " 254 

A SQUARE OF Munich " 259/ 

I set out FOR the NORTH " 259 

A Bavarian hop-field ready for the climbing vines ... " 263 y 

Hop-poles set up for the winter " 263 , 

On the road in Bavaria, near Munich " 270'/ 

A small part of the crowd of school-boys who gathered 

around me in a Bavarian village " S70 

A typical Bavarian Gasthaus, or tavern-inn " 274"*/ 

a sky-blue porcelain stove in the drinking-room of a 

Bavarian inn " 274 

The Rip van Winkle dwarf with the silver coins as vest , 

buttons " 279 v 

A Bavarian among his cronies in a Gasthaus " 279 

The cows of Bavaria wear not only a bell, but a wooden 

COLLAR " 286V 

Looking up one of the May-poles that are erected in 

Bavarian villages on May-day " 286 

"Hamsterers" setting out on Saturday afternoon to buy , 

food in the country " 291 V 

"Food weasels" returning from foraging the country- 
side " 291 , 

An outdoor bowling-alley in a Bavarian village ... " 295' 

A "Hamsterer" returning with a prize " 295 

Bavarian women working in the fields " 302"/ 

Bavarian peasants returning from church " 306' 

On their way home from church the children carry their 

shoes in their hands " 306 

Entrance to the home of Wagner in Bayreuth .... " 31 1^ 
The Sanoerverein, or "glee club," of Bayreuth, with 

whom I SPENT A DAY " 3^^ 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Women and oxen — or cows — were more numerous than 

MEN and horses IN THE FIELDS Facing p. ^l8 ^^ 

The Bavarian peasant does his baking in an outdoor oven " 318 
Women chopping up the tops of evergreen trees for fuel 

and fodder " 323'/ 

The great breweries of Kulmbach nearly all stood idle " 323 

TSCHIRN, the last VILLAGE OF BaVARIA, WAS ENTIRELY BLACK, 

with ITS SLATE ROOFS AND WALLS " 327 ^'^ 

The end of my German tramp was down through the avenue 

OF chestnuts into Weimar " 327 

A member OF THE Bayreuth Sangerverein " 334'/ 

My last German host was nearly six and a half feet tall " 334 

The man who "flew" me from Weimar to Berlin ... " 345'' 

A WOMAN tucked ME INTO FLYING-TOGS " 345 

A SON OF Bavaria " 352" 

A daughter of Bavaria — with her school lunch .... " 352 



FOREWORD 

I DID not go into Germany with any foreformed hypoth- 
eses as a skeleton for which to seek flesh; I went to 
report exactly what I found there. I am satisfied that 
there were dastardly acts during the war, and conditions 
inside the country, of which no tangible proofs remained 
at the time of my journey ; but there are other accusations 
concerning which I am still "from Missouri." I am as 
fully convinced as any one that we have done a good deed 
in helping to overthrow the nefarious dynasty of Hohen- 
zoUemism and its conscienceless military clique; I believe 
the German people often acquiesced in and sometimes 
applauded the wrong-doings of their former rulers. But 
I cannot shake off the impression that the more voiceless 
mass of the nation were imder a spell not unlike that cast 
by the dreadful dragons of their own old legends, and that 
we should to a certain extent take that fact into considera- 
tion in judging them under their new and more or less 
dragonless condition. I propose, therefore, that the reader 
free himself as much as possible from his natural repulsion 
toward its people before setting out on this journey through 
the Himgry Empire, to the end that he may gaze about 
him with clear, but unprejudiced, eyes. There has been 
too much reporting of hearsay evidence, all over the world, 
during the past few years, to make any other plan worth 
the paper. 

Harry A. Franck. 



VAGABONDING THROUGH 
CHANGING GERMANY 



ON TO THE RHINE 

FOR those of us not already members of the famous 
divisions that were amalgamated to form the Army of 
Occupation, it was almost as difficult to get into Germany 
after the armistice as before. All the A. E. F. seemed to 
cast longing eyes toward the Rhine — all, at least, except 
the veteran minority who had their fill of war and its 
appendages for all time to come, and the optimistic few who 
had serious hopes of soon looking the Statue of Liberty 
in the face. But it was easier to long for than to attain. 
In vain we flaunted our qualifications, real and self -bestowed, 
before those empowered to issue travel orders. In vain did 
we prove that the signing of the armistice had left us duties 
so slight that they were not even a fair return for the salary 
Uncle Sam paid us, to say nothing of the service we were 
eager to render him. G. H. Q. maintained that sphinxlike 
silence for which it had long been notorious. The lucky 
Third Army seemed to have taken on the characteristics 
of a haughty and exclusive club boasting an inexhaustible 
waiting-Hst. 

What qualifications, after all, were those that had as their 
climax the mere speaking of German ? Did not at least the 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

Wisconsin half of the 33 d. Division boast that ability to a 
man? As to duties, those of fighting days were soon re- 
placed by appallingly unbellicose tasks which carried us 
still farther afield into the placid wilderness of the SOS 
trebly distant from the scene of real activity. But a pebble 
dropped into the sea of army routine does not always fail 
to bring ripples, in time, to the shore. Suddenly one day, 
when the earthquaking roar of barrages and the insistent 
screams of air-raid alertes had merged with dim memories 
of the past, the half-forgotten request was unexpectedly 
answered. The flimsy French telegraph form, languidly 
torn open, yielded a laconic, "Report Paris prepared enter 
occupied territory." 

The change from the placidity of Alps-girdled Grenoble 
to Paris, in those days "capital of the world" indeed, was 
abrupt. The city was seething with an international life 
such as even she had never before gazed upon in her history. 
But with the Rhine attainable at last, one was in no mood 
to tarry among the pampered officers dancing attendance 
on the Peace Conference — least of all those of us who had 
known Paris in the simpler, saner days of old, or in the 
humanizing times of war strain. 

The Gare de I'Est was swirling with that incredible 
tohubohu, that headless confusion which had long reigned 
at all important French railway stations. Even in the six- 
teen months since I had first seen Paris under war condi- 
tions and taken train at Chaumont — then sternly hidden 
under the pseudonym of "G. H. Q." — that confusion had 
trebled. Stolid Britons in khaki and packs clamped their 
iron-shod way along the station corridors like draft-horses. 
Youthful "Yanks," not so unhke the Tommies in garb as 
in manner, fomed human whirlpools about the almost un- 
attainable den of the American A. P. M. Through compact 
throngs of horizon blue squirmed insistent poilus, sputtering 
some witty bon mot at every lunge. Here and there circled 

2 




THE DOWNFALL OF A STATUE AT METZ 



ON TO THE RHINE 

eddies of Belgian troopers, their cap-tassels waving with the 
rhythm of their march. Italian soldiers, misfitted in crum- 
pled and patched dirty-gray, struggled toward a far comer 
where stood two haughty carabinieri directly imported from 
their own sunny land, stubby rifles, imposing three-cornered 
hats, and all. At every guichet or hole in the wall waited 
long queues of civiHans, chiefly French, with that uncom- 
plaining patience which a lifetime, or at least a war-time, of 
standing in line has given a race that by temperament and 
individual habit should be least able to display patience. 
Sprightly grisettes tripped through every opening in the 
throng, dodging collisions, yet finding time to throw a co- 
quettish smile at every grinning "Sammy," irrespective of 
rank. Wan, yet sarcastic, women of the working-class 
buffeted their multifarious bundles and progeny toward the 
platforms. Flush-faced dowagers, upholstered in their 
somber best garments, waddled hither and yon in generally 
vain attempts to get the scanty thirty kilos of baggage, to 
which military rule had reduced civilian passengers, aboard 
the train they hoped to take. Well-dressed matrons labori- 
ously shoved their possessions before them on hand-trucks 
won after exertions that had left their hats awry and their 
tempers far beyond the point that speech has any meaning, 
some with happy, cynical faces at having advanced that far 
in the struggle, only to form queue again behind the always 
lengthy line of enforced patience which awaited the good 
pleasure of baggage- weighers, baggage-handlers, baggage- 
checkers, baggage-payment receiving-clerks. Now and then 
a begrimed and earth-weary female porter, under the official 
cap, bovinely pushed her laden truck into the waiting 
throngs, with that supreme indifference to the rights and 
comfort of others which couples so strangely with the social 
and individual politeness of the French. Once in a while 
there appeared a male porter, also in the insignia so familiar 
before the war, sallow and fleshless now in comparison 
2 3 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

with his female competitors, sometimes one-armed or shuf- 
fling on a half -useless leg. It would have been hard to find 
a place where more labor was expended for less actual 
accomplishment. 

At the train-gate those in uniform, who had not been 
called upon to stand in line for hours, if not for days, to get 
passports, to have them stamped and visaed, to fulfil a 
score of formalities that must have made the life of a civilian 
without official backing not unlike that of a stray cur in 
old-time Constantinople, were again specially favored. 
Once on the platform — but, alas! there was no escaping 
the crush and goal-less helter-skelter of the half-anarchy 
that had befallen the railway system of France in the last 
supreme lunge of the war. The Nancy-Metz express — the 
name still seemed strange, long after the signing of the 
armistice — had already been taken by storm. What shall 
it^.gain a man to have formed queue and paid his franc 
days before for a reserved place if the corridors leading 
to it are so packed and crammed with pillar-like poilus, 
laden with equipment enough to stock a hardware-store, 
with pack-and-rifle-bearing American doughboys, with the 
few lucky civilians who reached the gates early enough to 
worm their way into the interstices left, that nothing short 
of machine-gun or trench-mortar can clear him an entrance 
to it? 

Wise, however, is the man who uses his head rather than 
his shoulders, even in so unintellectual a matter as boarding 
a train. About a parlor-coach, defended by gendarmes, 
lounged a half-dozen American officers with that casual, 
self-satisfied air of those who "know the ropes" and are 
therefore able to bide their time in peace. A constant 
stream of harried, disheveled, bundle-laden, would-be pas- 
sengers swept down upon the parlor-car entrance, only to 
be politely but forcibly balked in their design by the guards- 
men with an oily, "Reserved for the French Staff." Thus 

4 



ON TO THE RHINE 

is disorder wont to breed intrigue. The platform clock had 
raised its hands to strike the hour of departure when the 
lieutenant who had offered to share his previous experience 
with me sidled cautiously up to a gendarme and breathed 
in his ear something that ended with "American Secret 
Service." The words themselves produced little more effect 
than there was truth in the whispered assertion. But the 
crisp new five-franc note deftly transferred from lieutenant 
to gendarme brought as quick results as could the whisper 
of "bakshish" in an Arab ear. We sprang o4ightly up the 
guarded steps and along a corridor as clear of humanity 
as No Man's Land on a sunny noonday. Give the French 
another year of war, with a few more millions of money- 
sowing Allies scattered through the length and breadth of 
their fair land, and the back-handed slip of a coin may be- 
come as universal an open sesame as in the most tourist- 
haunted corner of Naples. 

Another banknote, as judiciously applied, unlocked the 
door of a compartment that showed quite visible evidence 
of having escaped the public wear and tear of war, due, no 
doubt, to the protection afforded it by those magic words, 
"French Staff." But when it had quickly filled to its quota 
of six, one might have gazed in vain at the half-dozen 
American uniforms, girdled by the exclusive "Sam Browne," 
for any connection with the French, staff or otherwise, 
than that which binds all good allies together. The train 
glided imperceptibly into motion, yet not without carrying 
to our ears the suppressed grunt of a hundred stomachs 
compressed by as many hard and unwieldy packs in the 
coach ahead, and ground away into the night amid the 
shouts of anger, despair, and pretended derision of the 
throng of would-be travelers left behind on the platform. 

"Troubles over," said my companion, as we settled down 
to such comfort as a night in a European train compartment 
affords. "Of course we'll be hours late, and there will be 

5 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

a howling mob at every station as long as we are in France. 
But once we get to Metz the trains will have plenty of room; 
they'll be right on time, and all this mob-fighting will be 
over." 

"Propaganda," I mused, noting that in spite of his man- 
ner, as American as his uniform, the lieutenant spoke with 
a hint of Teutonic accent. We had long been warned to 
see propaganda by the insidious Hun in any suggestion of 
criticism, particularly in the unfavorable comparison of 
anything French with anything German. Did food cost 
more in Paris than on the Rhine? Propaganda! Did some 
one suggest that the American soldiers, their fighting task 
finished, felt the surge of desire to see their native shores 
again? Propaganda! Did a French waiter growl at the 
inadequacy of a lo-per-cent. tip? The sale Boche had 
surely been propaganding among the dish-handlers. 

The same subsidized hand that had admitted us had 
locked the parlor-car again as soon as the last staff pass — 
issued by the Banque de France — had been collected. 
Though hordes might beat with enraged fists, heels, and 
sticks on the doors and windows, not even a corridor lounger 
could get aboard to disturb our possible slumbers. To 
the old and infirm — ^which in military jargon stands for all 
those beyond the age of thirty — even the comfortably filled 
compartment of a French wagon de luxe is not an ideal place 
in which to pass a long night. But as often as we awoke 
to uncramp our legs and cramp them again in another posi- 
tion, the solace in the thought of what that ride might have 
been, standing rigid in a car corridor, swallowing and 
reswallowing the heated breath of a half-dozen nationalities, 
jolted and compressed by sharp-cornered packs and poilu 
hardware, unable to disengage a hand long enough to raise 
handkerchief to nose, lulled us quickly to sleep again. 

The train was hours late. All trains are hours late in 
overcrowded, overburdened France, with her long unre- 

6 



ON TO THE RHINE 

paired lines of communication, her depleted railway per- 
sonnel, her insufficient, war-worn rolHng-stock, struggling 
to carry a traffic that her days of peace never attempted. 
It was mid-morning when we reached Nancy, though the 
time-table had promised — to the inexperienced few who 
still put faith in French horaires — to bring us there while 
it was yet night. Here the key that had protected us for 
more than twelve hours was found, or its counterpart pro- 
duced, by the station-master. Upon our return from 
squandering the equivalent of a half-dollar in the station 
buifet for three inches of stale and gravelly war-bread 
smeared with something that might have been axle-grease 
mixed with the sweepings of a shoe-shop, and the privilege 
of washing it down with a black liquid that was called coffee 
for want of a specific name, the storm had broken. It was 
only by extraordinary luck, combined with strenuous physi- 
cal exertion, that we manhandled our way through the 
horizon-blue maelstrom that had surged into every avail- 
able comer, in brazen indifference to "staff" privileges, 
back to the places which a companion, volunteering for 
that service, had kept for us by dint of something little 
short of actual warfare. 

From the moment of crossing, not long after, the frontier 
between that was France in 19 14 and German Lorraine 
things seemed to take on a new freedom of movement, 
an orderliness that had become almost a memory. The 
train was still the same, yet it lost no more time. With a 
subtle change in faces, garb,and architecture, plainly evident, 
though it is hard to say exactly in what it consisted, came 
a smoothness that had long been divorced from travel by 
train. There was a calmness in the air as we pulled into 
Metz soon after noon which recalled pre-war stations. 
The platforms were ample, at least until our train began 
to disgorge the incredible multitude that had somehow 
found existing-place upon it. The station gates gave exit 

7 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

quickly, though every traveler was compelled to show his 
permission for entering the city. The aspect of the place 
was still German. Along the platform were ranged those 
awe-inspiring beings whom the uninitiated among us took 
to be German generals or field-officers instead of mere 
railway employees; wherever the eye roamed some species 
of Verboten gazed sternly upon us. But the iron hand had 
lost its grip. Partly for convenience' sake, partly in retalia- 
tion for a closely circumscribed journey, years before, 
through the land of the Kaiser, I had descended from the 
train by a window. What horror such undisciplined bar- 
barism would have evoked in those other years! Now 
the heavy faces under the pseudo-generals' caps not only 
gave no grimace of protest, presaging sterner measures; 
not even a shadow of surprise flickered across them. The 
grim Verboten signs remained placidly unmoved, like dicta- 
tors shorn of power by some force too high above to make 
any show of feelings worth while. 

The French had already come to Metz. One recognized 
that at once in the endless queues that formed at every 
window. One was doubly sure of it at sight of a tempera- 
ment-harassed official in horizon blue floundering in a 
tempest of paperasses, a whirlwind of papers, ink, and unful- 
filled intentions, behind the wicket, earnestly bent on 
quickly doing his best, yet somehow making nine motions 
where one would have sufficed. But most of the queues 
melted away more rapidly than was the Parisian custom; 
and as we moved nearer, to consign our baggage or to buy 
our tickets, we noted that the quickened progress was due 
to a slow but methodically moving German male, still in 
his field gray. He had come to the meeting-place of tem- 
perament and Ordnung, or system. Both have their value, 
but there are times and places for both. 

Among the bright hopes that had gleamed before me 
since turning my face toward the fallen enemy was a hot 



ON TO THE RHINE 

bath. To attain so unwonted a luxury in France was, 
in the words of its inhabitants, "toute une histoire'^ — in 
fact, an all but endless story. In the first place, the ex- 
traordinary desire must await a Saturday. In the second, 
the heater must not have fallen out of practice during its 
week of disuse. Thirdly, one must make sure that no 
other guest on the same floor had laid the same soapy 
plans within an hour of one's own chosen time. Fourthly, 
one must have put up at a hotel that boasted a bathtub, 
in itself no simple feat for those forced to live on their own 
honest earnings. Fifthly — but life is too short and paper 
too expensive to enumerate all the incidental details that 
must be brought together in harmonious concordance before 
one actually and physically got a real hot bath in France, 
after her four years and more of struggle to ward off the 
Hun. 

But in Germany — or was it only subtle propaganda 
again, the persistent nmior that hot baths were of daily 
occurrence and within reach of the popular purse? At 
any rate, I took stock enough in it to let anticipation play 
on the treat in store, once I were settled in Germany. Then 
all at once my eyes were caught by two magic words above 
an arrow pointing down the station corridor. Incredible! 
Some one had had the bright idea of providing a means, 
right here in the station, of removing the grime of travel 
at once. 

A clean bathroom, its "hot" water actually hot, was 
all ready in a twinkling — all, that is, except the soap. 
There was nothing in the decalogue, rumor had it, that 
the Germans would not violate for a bar of soap. Luckily, 
the hint had reached me before our commissary in Paris 
was out of reach. Yet, soap or no soap, the population 
managed to keep itself as presentable as the rank and file 
of civilians in the land behind us. 'The muscular young 
barber who kept shop a door or two beyond was as spick 

9 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

and span as any to whom I remembered intrusting my 
personal appearance in all France. He had, too, that 
indefinable something which in army slang is called 
"snappy," and I settled down in his chair with the genuine 
relaxation that comes with the ministrations of one who 
knows his trade. He answered readily enough a question 
put in French, but he answered it in German, which brought 
up another query, this time in his mother-tongue. 

"Nein,'' he replied, "I am French through and through, 
'way back for generations. My people have always been 
bom in Lorraine, but none of us younger ones speak much 
French." 

Yes, he had been a German soldier. He had worn the 
feldgrau more than two years, in some of the bloodiest 
battles on the western front, the last against Americans. 
It seemed uncanny to have him flourishing a razor about 
the throat of a man whom, a few weeks before, he had 
been in duty bound to slay. 

"And do you think the people of Metz really like the 
change?" I asked, striving to imply by the tone that I 
preferred a genuine answer to a diplomatic evasion. 

"/a, sehen Sie," he began, slowly, rewhetting his razor, 
"I am French. My family has always looked forward 
to the day when France should come back to us, A-aber" — 
in the slow guttural there was a hint of disillusionment — 
"they are a wise people, the French, but they have no 
Organizationsinn — so little idea of order, of discipline. 
They make so much work of simple matters. And they have 
such curious rules. In the house next to me lived a man 
whose parents were Parisians. His ancestors were all 
French. He speaks perfect French and very poor German. 
But his grandfather was bom, by chance, in Germany, 
and they have driven him out of Lorraine, while I, who 
barely understand French and have always spoken Ger- 
man, may remain because my ancestors were born here!" 

lO 







1 \ '■..■: ' ■vM,«>^r;*§(>^v: ":■>■■ .<M'^ 


^^gjgfjjjf^^'ifmmj^i^ 







A TROPHY OF WAR. A GERMAN MAIL-CAR SERVING THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION 




AMERICAN "m. P.'s" DIRECTING TRAFFIC IN THE TOWN OF 
COCHEM 



ON TO THE RHINE 

"Yet, on the whole, Metz would rather belong to France 
than to Germany?" 

Like all perfect barber-conversationalists he spaced his 
words in rhythm with his work, never losing a stroke : 

"We have much feeling for France. There was much 
flag-waving, much singing of the 'Marseillaise.' But as 
to what we would rather do — what have we to say about it, 
after all ? 

"Atrocities? Yes, I have seen some things that should 
not have been. It is war. There are brutes in all coun- 
tries. I have at least seen a German colonel shoot one of 
his own men for killing a wounded French soldier on the 
ground." 

The recent history of Metz was plainly visible in her 
architecture — ambitious, extravagant, often tasteless build- 
ings shouldering aside the humble remnants of a French 
town of the Middle Ages. In spite of the floods of horizon 
blue in her streets the atmosphere of the city was still 
Teutonic — heavy, a trifle sour, in no way chic. The skaters 
down on a lake before the promenade not only spoke Ger- 
man; they had not even the Latin grace of movement. 
Yet theie were signs to remind one that the capital of 
Lorraine had changed hands. It came first in petty little 
alterations, hastily and crudely made — a paper "Entree" 
pasted over an "Eingang" cut in stone; a signboard point- 
ing "A Treves" above an older one reading "Nach Trier." 
A strip of white cloth along the front of a great brownstone 
building that had always been the " Kaiserliches Postamt" 
announced "Republique Frangaise; Postes, Telegraphes, 
Telephones." Street names had not been changed; they 
had merely been translated — " Rheinstrasse " had become 
also "Rue du Rhin." The French were making no secret 
of their conviction that Metz had returned to them for all 
time. They had already begun to make permanent changes. 
Yet many mementoes of the paternal government that had 

II 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

so hastily fled to the eastward were still doing duty as if 
nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The dark- 
blue post-boxes still announced themselves as " Brief kasten," 
and bore the fatherly reminder, ' ' Brief marken und Addresse 
nicht vergessen" ("Do not forget stamps and address"). 
At least the simple public could be trusted to write the 
letter without its attention being called to that necessity. 
Where crowds were wont to collect, detailed directions 
stared them in the face, instead of leaving them to guess 
and scramble, as is too often the case among our lovable 
but temperamental allies. 

A large number of shops were "Consigne a la Troupe," 
which would have meant "Out of Bounds" to the British 
or "Off Limits" to our own soldiers. Others were merely 
branded "Maison AUemande," leaving Allied men in 
uniform permission to trade there, if they chose. It might 
have paid, too, for nearly all of them had voluntarily added 
the confession "Liquidation Totale." One such proprietor 
announced his "Maison Principale a Strasbourg." He 
certainly was "S. O. L." — which is armyese for something 
like "Sadly out of luck." In fact, the German residents 
were being politely but firmly crowded eastward. As 
their clearance sales left an empty shop a French merchant 
quickly moved in, and the Boche went home to set his 
alarm-clock. The departing Hun was forbidden to carry 
with him more than two thousand marks as an adult, or 
five hundred for each child — and der Deutsche Gott knows 
a mark is not much money nowadays ! — and he was obliged 
to take a train leaving at 5 a.m. 

On the esplanade of Metz there once stood a bronze 
equestrian statue of Friedrich III, gazing haughtily down 
upon his serfs. Now he lay broken-headed in the soil 
beneath, under the horse that thrust stiff legs aloft, as on 
a battle-field. So rude and sudden had been his downfall 
that he had carried with him one side of the massive stone- 

12 



ON TO THE RHINE 

and-chain balustrade that had long protected his pedestal 
from plebeian contact. Farther on there was a still more 
impressive sign of the times. On the brow of a knoll above 
the lake an immense bronze of the late Kaiser — as he fain 
would have looked — ^had been replaced by the statue of a 
poilu, hastily daubed, yet artistic for all that, with the 
careless yet sure lines of a Rodin. The Kaiser's gaze — 
strangely enough — had been turned toward Germany, and 
the bombastic phrase of dedication had, with French sense 
of the fitness of things, been left untouched — "Errichtet von 
seinem dankharen Volke." Even "his grateful people," 
strolling past now and then in pairs or groups, could not 
suppress the suggestion of a smile at the respective positions 
of dedication and poilu. For the latter gazed toward his 
beloved France, with those far-seeing eyes of all his tribe, 
and beneath him was his war slogan, purged at last of the 
final three letters he had bled so freely to efface — "On 
les A." 

A German ex-soldier, under the command of an American 
private, rechecked my trunk in less than a minute. The 
train was full, but it was not overcrowded. Travelers 
boarded it in an orderly manner; there was no erratic 
scrambling, no impassable corridor. We left on time and 
maintained that advantage to the end of the journey. It 
seemed an anachronism to behold a train-load of American 
soldiers racing on and on into Germany, perfectly at ease 
behind a German crew that did its best to make the trip 
as comfortable and swift as possible — and succeeded far 
beyond the expectations of the triumphant invaders. In 
the first-class coach, "Reserve pour Militaires," which had 
been turned over to us under the terms of the armistice, 
all was in perfect working order. Half voiceless with a 
cold caught on the unheated French trains on which I had 
shivered my way northward from Grenoble, I found this 
one too hot. The opening of a window called attention 

13 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

to the fact that Germany had been obliged to husband 
her every scrap of leather; the window-tackle was now of 
woven hemp. One detail suggested bad faith in fulfilling 
the armistice terms — the heavy red-velvet stuff covering 
the seats had been hastily slashed off, leaving us to sit on 
the burlap undercoverings. Probably some undisciplined 
railway employee had decided to levy on the enemy while 
there was yet time for the material of a gown for his daugh- 
ter or his Mddchen. Later journeys showed many a seat 
similarly plundered. 

A heavy, wet snow was falling when we reached Treves 
— or Trier, as you choose. It was late, and I planned to 
dodge into the nearest hotel. I had all but forgotten that 
I was no longer among allies, but in the land of the enemy. 
The American M. P. who demanded my papers at the sta- 
tion gate, as his fellows did, even less courteously, of all 
civilians, ignored the word "hotel" and directed me to the 
billeting-office. Salutes were snapped at me wherever the 
street-lamps made my right to them visible. The town 
was brown with American khaki, as well as white with the 
sodden snow. At the baize-covered desk of what had 
evidently once been a German court-room a commissioned 
Yank glanced at my orders, ran his finger down a long 
ledger page, scrawled a line on a billeting form, and tossed 
it toward me. 

Beyond the Porta Nigra, the ancient Roman gate that 
the would-be Romans of to-day — or yesterday — have so 
carefully preserved, I lost my way in the blinding whiteness. 
A German civilian was approaching. I caught myself 
wondering if he would refuse to answer, and whether I 
should stand on my dignity as one of his conquerors if he 
did. He seemed flattered that he should have been appealed 
to for information. He waded some distance out of his 
way to leave me at the door I sought, and on the way he 
bubbled over with the excellence of the American soldier, 

14 



ON TO THE RHINE 

with now and then a hint at the good fortune of Trier in 
not being occupied by the French or British. When he 
had left me I rang the door-bell several times without result. 
I decided to adopt a sterner attitude, and pounded lustily 
on the massive outer door. At length a window above 
opened and a querulous female voice demanded, "Wer 
ist daV To be sure, it was near midnight; but was I 
not for once demanding, rather than requesting, admit- 
tance? I strove to give my voice the peremptoriness with 
which a German officer would have answered, "American 
lieutenant, billeted here." 

**Ich komni' gleich hinunter,^* came the quick reply, in 
almost honeyed tones. 

The household had not yet gone to bed. It consisted 
of three women, of as many generations, the youngest 
of whom had come down to let me in. Before we reached 
the top of the stairs she began to show solicitude for my 
comfort. The mother hastened to arrange the easiest 
chair for me before the fire; the grandmother doddered 
toothlessly at me from her comer behind the stove; the 
family cat was already caressing my boot-tops. 

"You must have something to eat!" cried the mother. 

"Don't trouble," I protested. "I had dinner at Metz." 

"Yes, but that was four hours ago. Some milk and 
eggs, at least?" 

"Eggs," I queried, "and milk? I thought there were 
none in Germany." 

"Dock," she replied, with a sage glance, "if you know 
where to look for them, and can get there. I have just 
been out in the country. I came on the same train you 
did. But it is hard to get much. Every one goes out 
scouring the country now. And one must have money. 
An egg, one mark! Before the war they were never so 
much a dozen." 

The eggs were fresh enough, but the milk was decidedly 

IS 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

watery, and in place of potatoes there was some sort of 
jellied turnip, wholly tasteless. While I ate, the daughter 
talked incessantly, the mother now and then adding a 
word, the grandmother nodding approval at intervals, 
with a wrinkled smile. All male members of the family 
had been lost in the war, unless one counts the second 
fiance of the daughter, now an officer "over in Germany," 
as she put it. When I started at the expression she smiled : 

"Yes, here we are in America, you see. Lucky for us, 
too. There will never be any robbery and anarchy here, 
and over there it will get worse. Anyhow, we don't feel 
that the Americans are real enemies." 

"No?" I broke in. "Why not?" 

'^Ach!'' she said, evasively, throwing her head on one 
side, "they . . . they . . . Now if it had been the 
French, or the British, who had occupied Trier ... At 
first the Americans were very easy onus — too easy" (one 
felt the German religion of discipline in the phrase). "They 
arrived on December first, at noon, and by evening every 
soldier had a sweetheart. The newspapers raged. It was 
shameful for a girl to give herself for a box of biscuits, 
or a cake of chocolate, or even a bar of soap! But they 
had been hungry for years, and not even decency, to say 
nothing of patriotism, can stand out against continual 
hunger. Besides, the war — ach! 1 don't know what has 
come over the German woman since the war! 

"But the Americans are stricter now," she continued, 
"and there are new laws that forbid us to talk to the soldiers 
— on the street ..." 

"German laws?" I interrupted, thoughtlessly, for, to 
tell the truth, my mind was wandering a bit, thanks either 
to the heat of the porcelain stove or to her garrulousness, 
equal to that of any meridionale-irom southern France. 

''Nein, it was ordered by General Pershing." (She 

pronounced it "Pear Shang.") 

i6 



ON TO THE RHINE 

Stupid of me, but my change from the land of an ally 
to that of an enemy had been so abrupt, and the evidence 
of enmity so slight, that I had scarcely realized it was our 
own commander-in-chief who was now reigning in Trier. 
I covered my retreat by abruptly putting a question about 
the Kaiser. Demigod that I had always found him in the 
popular mind in Germany, I felt sure that here, at least, 
I should strike a vibrant chord. To my surprise, she 
screwed up her face into an expression of disgust and drew 
a finger across her throat. 

■''That for the Kaiser!" she snapped. "Of course, he 
wasn't entirely to blame; and he wanted to quit in nine- 
teen-sixteen. But the rich people, the Krupps and the like, 
hadn't made enough yet. He didn't, at least, need to run 
away. If he had stayed in Germany, as he should have, no 
one would have hurt him; no living man would have 
touched a hair of his head. Our Crown Prince? Ach! The 
Crown Prince is leichtsinnig (light-minded)." 

"Of course, it is natural that the British and French 
should treat us worse than the Americans," she went on, 
unexpectedly harking back to an earlier theme. "They 
used to bomb us here in Trier, the last months. I have 
often had to help Grossmutter down into the cellar" — 
Grossmutter smirked confirmation — "but that was nothing 
compared to what our brave airmen did to London and 
Paris. Why, in Paris they killed hundreds night after 
night, and the people were so wild with fright they trampled 
one another to death in trying to find refuge ..." 

"I was in Paris myself during all the big raids, as well 
as the shelling by 'Grosse Bertha,'" I protested, "and I 
assure you it was hardly as bad as that." 

"Ah, but they cover up those things so cleverly," she 
replied, quickly, not in the slightest put out by the con- 
tradiction. 

"There is one thing the Americans do not do well," she 

17 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

rattled on. "They do not make the rich and the influential 
contribute their fair share. They make all the people {das 
Volk) billet as many as their houses will hold, but the rich 
and the officials arrange to take in very few, in their big 
houses. And it is the same as before the war ended, with 
the food. The wealthy still have plenty of food that they 
get through Schleichhandel, tricky methods, and the Ameri- 
cans do not search them. Children and the sick are sup- 
posed to get milk, and a bit of good bread, or zwiebach. 
Yet Grossmutter here is so ill she cannot digest the war-bread, 
and still she must eat it, for the rich grab all the better 
bread, and, as we have no influence, we cannot get her 
what the rules allow." 

I did not then know enough of the American adminis- 
tration of occupied territory to remind her that food- 
rationing was still entirely in the hands of the native offi- 
cials. I did know, however, how prone conquering armies 
are to keep up the old inequalities; how apt the conqueror 
is to call upon the "influential citizens" to take high places 
in the local administration; and that "influential citizens" 
are not infrequently so because they have been the most 
grasping, the most selfish, even if not actually dishonest. 

Midnight had long since struck when I was shown into 
the guest-room, with a triple ' ' Gute Nacht. Schlafen Sie wohl. ' ' 
The deep wooden bedstead was, of course, a bit too short, 
and the triangular bolster and two large pillows, taking the 
place of the French round traversin, had to be reduced to 
American tastes. But the room was speckless; several 
minor details of comfort had been arranged with motherly 
care, and as I slid down under the feather tick that does 
duty as quilt throughout Germany my feet encountered — 
a hot flat-iron. I had not felt so old since the day I first 
put on long trousers ! 

My last conscious reflection was a wonder whether the 
good citizens of Trier were not, perhaps, "stringing" us a 

i8 




THE BRIDGE OF BOATS AT COBLENZ 



^^^^^^^^^^H 


^HW 


if ir^' 




m 


!■■■■■ 



AMERICAN ARMY AUTOMOBILES BEFORE THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY 

OF OCCUPATION ON THE BANK OF THE RHINE. ACROSS THE RIVER THE GREAT 

FORTRESS OF EHRENBREITSTEIN, FLYING THE STARS AND STRIPES 



ON TO THE RHINE 

bit with their aggressive show of friendliness, of contentment 
at our presence. Some of it had been a bit too thick. Yet, 
as I thought back over the evening, I could not recall a 
word, a tone, a look, that gave the slightest basis to suppose 
that my three hostesses were not the simple, frank, docile 
Volk they gave every outward evidence of being. 

The breakfast next morning consisted of coffee and bread, 
with more of the tasteless turnip jelly. All three of the 
articles, however, were only in the name what they pur- 
ported to be, each being Ersatz, or substitute, for the real 
thing. The coffee was really roasted corn, and gave full 
proof of that fact by its insipidity. But Frau Franck 
served me real sugar with it. The bread — what shall one 
say of German war-bread that will make the picture dark 
and heavy and indigestible enough? It was cut from just 
such a loaf as I had seen gaunt soldiers of the Kaiser hugging 
under one arm as they came blinking up out of their dug- 
outs at the point of a doughboy bayonet, and to say that 
such a loaf seemed to be half sawdust and half mud, that it 
was heavier and blacker than any adobe brick, and that 
its musty scent was all but overpowering, would be far too 
mild a statement and the comparison an insult to the mud 
brick. The mother claimed it was made of potatoes and 
bad meal. I am sure she was over-charitable. Yet on 
this atrocious substance, which I, by no means unaccustomed 
to strange food, tasted once with a shudder of disgust, the 
German masses had been chiefly subsisting since 191 5. 
No wonder they quit ! The night before the bread had been 
tolerable, having been brought from the country; but the 
three women had stayed up munching that until the last 
morsel had disappeared. 

The snow had left the trees of Trier beautiful in their 
winding-sheets, but the streets had already been swept. 
It seemed queer, yet, after sixteen months of similar experi- 
ence in France, a matter of course to be able to ask one's. 
3 19 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

way of an American policeman on every corner of this 
ancient German town. In the past eight years I had been 
less than two in my native land, yet I had a feeling of 
knowing the American better than ever before; for to take 
him out of his environment is to see him in close-up per- 
spective, as it were. Even here he seemed to feel perfectly 
at home. Now and then a group of school-girls playfully 
bombarded an M. P. with snowballs, and if he could not 
shout back some jest in genuine German, he at least said 
something that "got across." The populace gave us our 
fair half of the sidewalk, some making a little involuntary 
motion as if expecting an officer to shove them off it entirely, 
in the orthodox Prussian manner. Street-cars were free to 
wearers of the "Sam Browne"; enlisted men paid the 
infinitesimal fare amid much good-natured "joshing" of 
the solemn conductor, with his colonel's uniform and his 
sackful of pewter coins. 

On railway trains tickets were a thing of the past to 
wearers of khaki. To the border of Lorraine we paid the 
French military fare; once in Germany proper, one had only 
to satisfy the M. P. at the gate to journey anywhere within 
the occupied area. At the imposing building out of which 
the Germans had been chased to give place to our "Advanced 
G. H. Q.," I found orders to proceed at once to Coblenz, 
but there was time to transgress military rules to the extent 
of bringing Grossmutter a loaf of white bread and a can of 
condensed milk from our commissary, to repair my damage 
to the family larder, before hurrying to the station. Yank 
guardsmen now sustained the contentions of the Verboten 
signs, instead of letting them waste away in impotence, 
as at Metz. A boy marched up and down the platform, 
pushing a convenient little news-stand on wheels, and offer- 
ing for sale all the important Paris papers, as well as Ger- 
man ones. The car I entered was reserved for Allied 
officers, yet several Boche civilians rode in it unmolested. 

20 



ON TO THE RHINE 

I could not but wonder what would have happened had 
conditions been reversed. They were cheerful enough in 
spite of what ought to have been a humiliating state of 
affairs, possibly because of an impression I heard one 
hoarsely whisper to another, "Oh, they'll go home in an- 
other six months; an American officer told me so." Evi- 
dently some one had been "fraternizing, " as well as receiv- 
ing information which the heads of the Peace Conference 
had not yet gained. 

The Schnellzug was a real express ; the ride like that from 
Albany to New York. Now and then we crossed the 
winding Moselle, the steep, plump hills of which were 
planted to their precipitous crests with orderly vineyards, 
each vine carefully tied to its stalk. For mile after mile 
the hills were terraced, eight-foot walls of cut stone holding 
up four-foot patches of earth, paths for the workers snaking 
upward between them. The system was almost exactly 
that of the Peruvians under the Incas, far apart as they 
were, in time and place, from the German peasant. The 
two civilizations could scarcely have compared notes, 
yet this was not the only similarity between them. But 
then, hunger and over-population breed stern necessity 
the world over, and with like necessity as with similar 
experience, it is no plagiarism to have worked out the 
problem in the same way. Between the vineyards, in 
stony clefts in the hills useless for cultivation, orderly towns 
were tucked away, clean little towns, still flecked with the 
snow of the night before. Even the French officers beside 
us marveled at the cleanliness of the towns en Bochie, and 
at the extraordinary physical comforts of Mainz — I mean 
Mayence — the headquarters of their area of occupation. 

Heavy American motor-trucks pounded by along the 
already dusty road beside us, alternating now and then 
with a captured German one, the Kaiser's eagles still on 
its flanks, but driven by a nonchalant American doughboy, 

21 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

its steel tires making an uproar that could be plainly heard 
aboard the racing express. Long freight-trains rattled 
past in the opposite direction. With open-work wheels, 
stubby little cars stenciled "Posen," "Essen," "Breslau," 
"Briissel," and the like, a half-dozen employees perched 
in the cubbyholes on the car ends at regular intervals, 
they were German from eiigine to lack of caboose — except 
that here and there a huge box-car lettered ''U. S. A." 
towered above its puny Boche fellows like a mounted guard 
beside a string of prisoners. There will still be a market 
for officers' uniforms in Germany, though their military 
urge be completely emasculated. Even the brakemen of 
these freight-trains looked like lieutenants or captains; 
a major in appearance proved to be a station guard, a 
colonel sold tickets, and the station-master might easily 
have been mistaken for a Feldmarschall. Some were, in 
fact. For when the Yanks first occupied the region many 
of their commanders complained that German officers 
were not saluting them, as required by orders of the Army 
of Occupation. Investigation disclosed the harmless identity 
of the imposing "officers" in question. But the rule was 
amended to include any one in uniform; we could not be 
wasting our time to find out whether the wearer of a gen- 
eral's shoulder-straps was the recent commander of the 
4th Army Corps or the town-crier. So that now Allied 
officers were saluted by the police, the firemen, the mailmen 
— including the half -grown ones who carry special-delivery 
letters — and even by the "white wings." 

Those haughty Eisenbahnbeamten took their orders now 
from plain American "bucks," took them unquestioningly, 
with signs of friendliness, with a docile, uncomplaining — 
shall I say fatalism? The far-famed German discipline 
had not broken down even under occupation; it carried 
on as persistently, as doggedly as ever. A conductor pass- 
ing through our car recalled a "hobo" experience out in 

22 




GERMAN CIVILIANS LINED UP BEFORE THE BACK ENTRANCE TO AMERICAN HEAD- 
QUARTERS, AWAITING PERMISSION TO EXPLAIN WHY THEY WISH TO TRAVEL 
OUTSIDE OUR ZONE OF OCCUPATION 




AMERICAN "formal GUARD-MOUNT " IN A SQUARE OF COBLENZ. THE GERMAN 
RESIDENTS ALWAY'S WATCHED THIS FUNCTION WITH GREAT INTEREST 



ON TO THE RHINE 

our West back in the early days of the century. Armed 
trainmen had driven the summer-time harvest of free riders 
off their trains for more than a week, until so great a multi- 
tude of "boes " had collected in a water-tank town of Dakota 
that we took a freight one day completely by storm, from 
cow-catcher to caboose. And the bloodthirsty, fire-eating 
brakeman who picked his way along that train, gently 
requesting the uninvited railroad guests to "Give us a 
place for a foot there, pal, won't you, please?" had the 
selfsame expression on his face as did this apologetic, 
smirking, square-headed Boche who sidled so gently past us. 
My fellow-officers found them cringing, detestably servile. 
"Put a gun in their hands," said one, "and you'd see how 
quick their character would change. It's a whole damned 
nation crying 'Kameradr — splaying 'possum imtil the danger 
is over." 

Probably it was. But there were times when one could 
not help wondering if, after all, there was not sincerity in the 
assertion of my guide of the night before : 

"We are done; we have had enough at last." 



II 

GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

HTHE "Residence City" of Coblenz, headquarters of the 
■■• American Army of Occupation, is one of the finest 
on the Rhine. Wealth has long gravitated toward the 
triangle of land at its junction with the Moselle. The 
owners — or recent owners — of mines in Lorraine make their 
homes there. The mother of the late unlamented Kaiser 
was fond of the place and saw to it that no factory chim- 
neys came to sully its skies with their smoke, or its streets 
and her tender heart-strings with the wan and sooty serfs 
of industrial progress. The British at Cologne had more 
imposing quarters; the French at Mayence, and particu- 
larly at Wiesbaden, enjoyed more artistic advantages. A 
few of our virile warriors, still too young to distinguish real 
enjoyment from the flesh-pots incident to metropolitan 
bustle, were sometimes heard to grumble, "Huh! they gave 
us third choice, all right!" But the consensus of opinion 
amorig the Americans was contentment. The sudden 
change from the mud burrows of the Argonne, or from the 
war-worn villages of the Vosges, made it natural that some 
should draw invidious comparisons between our long- 
suffering ally and the apparently unscathed enemy. Those 
who saw the bogy of "propaganda" in every corner accused 
the Germans of preferring that the occupied territory be 
the Rhineland, rather than the interior of Germany, "be- 
cause this garden spot would make a better impression 

24 



GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

on their enemies, particularly the Americans, so susceptible 
to creature comforts." By inference the Boche might 
have offered us East Prussia or Schleswig instead! It was 
hard to believe, however, that those splendid, if sometimes 
top-heavy, residences stretching for miles along the Rhine 
were built, twenty to thirty years ago in many cases, with 
any conscious purpose of impressing the prospective enemies 
of the Fatherland. 

It was these creature comforts of his new billeting area 
that made the American soldier feel so strangely at home 
on the Rhine. Here his office, in contrast to the rude 
stone casernes with their tiny tin stoves that gave off 
smoke rather than heat, was cozy, warm, often well carpeted. 
His billets scarcely resembled the frigid, medieval ones 
of France. Now that no colonel can rank me out of it, 
I am free to admit that in all my travels I have never been 
better housed and servanted than in Coblenz, nor had a 
more solicitous host than the staid old judge who was forced 
to take me in for a mere pittance — paid in the end by his 
own people. The Regierungsgehdude — it means nothing 
more terrifying than "government building" — which the 
rulers of the province yielded with outward good grace to 
our army staff, need not have blushed to find itself in 
Washington society. To be sure, we were able to dispossess 
the Germans of their best, whereas the French could only 
allot us what their own requirements left; yet there is 
still a margin in favor of the Rhineland for material comfort. 

I wonder if the American at home understands just what 
military occupation means. Some of our Southerners of 
the older generation may, but I doubt whether the average 
man can visualize it. Occupation means a horde of armed 
strangers permeating to every nook and comer of your 
town, of your house, of your private life. It means seeing 
what you have hidden in that closet behind the chimney; 
it means yielding your spare bed, even if not doubling up 

25 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

with some other member of the family in order to make 
another bed available. It means having your daughters 
come into constant close contact with self-assertive young 
men, often handsome and fascinating; it means subjecting 
yourself, or at least your plans, to the rules, sometimes 
even to the whims, of the occupiers. 

The Americans came to Coblenz without any of those 
bombastic formalities with which the imagination imbues 
an occupation. One day the streets were full of soldiers, 
a bit slow in their movements and thinking processes, 
dressed in bedraggled dull gray, and the next with more 
soldiers, of quick perception and buoyant step, dressed in 
khaki. The new-comers were just plain fighters, still 
dressed in what the shambles of the Argonne had left them 
of clothing. They settled down to a shave and a bath 
and such comforts as were to be had, with the xmassuming 
adaptability that marks the American. The Germans, 
seeing no signs of those unpleasant things which had always 
attended their occupation of a conquered land, probably 
smiled to themselves and whispered that these Americaner 
were strangely ignorant of military privileges. They did 
not realize that their own conception of a triumphant army, 
the rough treatment, the tear-it-apart-and-take-what-you- 
want-for-yourself style of von Kluck's pets, was not the 
American manner. The doughboy might hate a German 
man behind a machine-gun as effectively as any one, but 
his hatred did not extend to the man's women and children. 
With the latter particularly he quickly showed that cama- 
raderie for which the French had found him remarkable, 
and the plump little square-headed boys and the over- 
blond little girls flocked about him so densely that an order 
had to be issued requiring parents to keep their children 
away from American barracks. 

But the Germans soon learned that the occupiers knew 

what they were about, or at least learned with vertiginous 

26 



GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

rapidity. A burgomaster who admitted that he might be 
able to accommodate four hundred men in his town, if 
given time, was informed that there would be six thousand 
troops there in an hour, and that they must be lodged be- 
fore nightfall. Every factory, every industry of a size worth 
considering, that produced anything of use to the Army of 
Occupation, was taken over. We paid well for everything 
of the sort — or rather, the Germans did in the end, under 
the ninth article of the armistice — but we took it. Scarcely 
a family escaped the piercing eye of the billeting officer; 
clubs, hotels, recreation-halls, the very schools and churches, 
were wholly or in part filled with the boyish conquerors 
from overseas. We commandeered the poor man 's drinldng- 
places and transferred them into enlisted men's barracks. 
We shooed the rich man out of his simiptuous club and 
turned it over to our officers. We allotted the pompous 
Festhalle and many other important buildings to the Y. M. 
C. A., and "jazz" and ragtime and burnt-cork jokes took 
the place of Lieder and Mdnnerchor. While we occupied 
their best buildings, the German staff which necessity had 
left in Coblenz huddled into an insignificant little house 
on a side-street. Promenading citizens encountered pairs 
of Yanks patrolling with fixed bayonets their favorite 
Spaziergange. Day after day throngs of Boches lined up 
before the back door to our headquarters, waiting hours 
to explain to American lieutenants why they wished to 
travel outside our area. Though the lieutenants did not 
breakfast until eight, that line formed long before daylight, 
and those who did not get in before noon stood on, out- 
wardly uncomplaining, sometimes munching a war-bread 
sandwich, until the office opened again at two, taking their 
orders from a buck private, probably from Milwaukee, 
with a red band on his arm. A flicker of the M. P.'s eyelid, 
a flip of his hand, was usually the only command needed; 
so ready has his lifetime of discipline made the average 

27 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

German to ooey any one who has an authoritative manner. 
Every railway-station gate, even the crude Httle ferries 
across the Rhine and the Moselle, were subject to the orders 
of pass-gathering American soldiers. 

The Germans could not travel, write letters, telephone, 
telegraph, publish newspapers, without American permis- 
sion or acquiescence. Meetings were no longer family 
affairs; a German-speaking American sergeant in plain 
clothes sat in on all of them. We marched whole societies 
off to jail because they were so careless as to gather about 
cafe tables without the writtesn permission required for such 
activities. When they were arrested for violations of these 
and sundry other orders their fate was settled, not after 
long meditation by sage old gentlemen, but in the twinkling 
of an eye by a cocksure lieutenant who had reached the 
maturity of twenty-one or two, and who, after the custom of 
the A. E. F., "made it snappy," got it over with at once, 
and lost no sleep in wondering if his judgment had been 
wrong. In the matter of cafes, we touched the German 
in his tenderest spot by forbidding the sale or consumption 
of all joy-producing beverages except beer and light wines — 
and the American conception of what constitutes a strong 
drink does not jibe with the German's — and permitted even 
those to be served only from eleven to two and from five to 
seven — though later we took pity on the poor Boche and 
extended the latter period three hours deeper into the 
evening. 

Occasional incidents transcended a bit the spirit of our 
really lenient occupation. We ordered the Stars and 
Stripes to be flown from every building we occupied; and 
there were colonels who made special trips to Paris to get 
a flag that could be seen — could not help being seen, in fact 
— for fifty kilometers round about. The Germans trembled 
with fear to see one of their most cherished bad customs 
go by the board when a divisional order commanded them 

28 



GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

to leave their windows open at night, which these strange 
new-comers considered a means of avoiding, rather than 
abetting, the "flu" and kindred ailments. Over in Mayen 
a band of citizens, in some wild lark or a surge of "democ- 
racy," dragged a stone statue of the Kaiser from its pedestal 
and rolled it out to the edge of town. There an American 
sergeant in charge of a stone-quarry ordered it broken 
up for road material. The Germans put in a claim of 
several thousand marks to replace this "work of art." 
The American officer who "surveyed" the case genially 
awarded them three mk. fifty — the value of the stone at 
current prices. In another village the town-crier sum- 
moned forth every inhabitant over the age of ten, from 
the burgomaster down, at nine each morning, to sweep 
the streets, and M. P.'s saw to it that no one returned in- 
doors until the American C. O. had inspected the work and 
pronounced it satisfactory. But that particular officer 
cannot necessarily be credited with originality for the idea; 
he had been a prisoner in Germany. We even took liber- 
ties with the German's time. On March 12th all clocks 
of official standing were moved ahead to correspond to the 
"summer hour" of France and the A. E. F., and that auto- 
matically forced private timepieces to be advanced also. 
My host declined for a day or two to conform, but he had 
only to miss one train to be cured of his obstinacy. Coblenz 
was awakened by the insistent notes of the American 
reveille; it was reminded of bedtime by that most impres- 
sive of cradle-songs, the American taps, the solemn, repose- 
ful notes of which floated out across the Rhine like an 
invitation to wilful humanity to lay away its disputes as 
it had its labors of the day. 

In the main, for all the occupation, civilian life proceeded 
normally. Trains ran on time; cinemas and music-halls 
perpetrated their customary piffle on crowded and uproari- 
ous houses; bare-kneed football games occupied the leisure 

29 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

hours of German youths; newspapers appeared as usual, 
subject only to the warning to steer clear of a few spec- 
ified subjects; cafes were filled at the popular hours in 
spite of the restrictions on consumption and the tendency 
of their orchestras to degenerate into rag-time. Would 
military occupation be anything like this in, say, Delaware? 
We often caught ourselves asking the question, and striving 
to visualize our own land under a reversal of conditions. 
But the imagination never carried us very far in that 
direction; at least those of us who had left it in the early 
days of the war were unable to picture our native heath 
under any such regime. 

Though we appropriated their best to our own purposes, 
the Germans will find it hard to allege any such wanton 
treatment of their property, their homes, their castles, and 
their government buildings, as their own hordes so often 
committed in France and Belgium. Our officers and men, 
with rare exceptions, gave the habitations that had tem- 
porarily become theirs by right of conquest a care which 
they would scarcely have bestowed upon their own. The 
ballroom floor of Coblenz's most princely club was solici- 
tously covered with canvas to protect it from officers' hob- 
nails. Castle Stolzenfels, a favorite place of doughboy 
pilgrimage a bit farther up the Rhine, was supplied with 
felt slippers for heavily shod visitors. The Baedekers of 
the future will no doubt call the tourist's attention to the 
fact that such a Schloss, that this governor's palace and 
that colonel's residence, were once occupied by American 
soldiers, but there will be small chance to insinuate, as 
they have against the French of 1689 into the description 
of half the monuments on the Rhine, the charge "destroyed 
by the Americans in 1919." 

How quickly war shakes down ! Until we grew so accus- 
tomed to it that the impression faded away, it was a con- 
stant surprise to note how all the business of life went on 

30 




GERMAN OFFICERS — IN THE DAYS BEFORE THE ARMISTICE 




A BUSY TIME ON THE GERMAN FRONT 



GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

unconcerned under the occupation. Ordnung still reigned. 
The postman still delivered his letters punctually and 
placidly. Transportation of all kinds retained almost its 
peace-time efficiency. Paper ends and cigarette butts 
might litter a comer here and there, but that was merely 
evidence that some careless American soldier was not 
carrying them to a municipal waste-basket in the disciplined 
German fashion. For if the Boches themselves had thrown 
off restraint "over in Germany" — a thing hard to believe 
and still harder to visualize — there was little evidence of a 
similar tendency along the Rhine. 

Dovetailed, as it were, into the life of our late adversaries 
on the field of battle, there was a wide difference of opinion 
in the A. E. F. as to the German character. The French 
had no such doubts. They admitted no argument as to the 
criminality of the Boche; yet they confessed themselves 
unable to understand his psychology. "lis sont sinche- 
ment faux'' is perhaps the most succinct summing up of the 
French verdict. "It took the world a long time to realize 
that the German had a national point of view, a way of 
thinking quite at variance with the rest of the world" — 
our known western world, at least; I fancy we should 
find the Japanese not dissimilar if we could read deep down 
into his heart. But the puzzling thing about the German's 
"mentality" is that up to a certain point he is quite like 
the rest of us. As the alienist's patient seems perfectly 
normal until one chances upon his weak spot, so the German 
looks and acts for the most part like any normal human 
being. It is only when one stumbles upon the subject of 
national ethics that he is found widely separated from the 
bulk of mankind. Once one discovers this sharp comer 
in his thinking, and is able to turn it with him, it is com- 
paratively easy to comprehend the German's peculiar 
notions of recent events. 

"The Hun," asserted a European editorial- writer, "feels 

31 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

that his army has not been beaten; that, on the contrary, 
he had all the military prestige of the war. Then he knew 
that there was increasing scarcity of food at home and, 
feeling that the Allies were in mortal dread of new drives 
by the German army and would be only too glad to 
compromise, he proposed an armistice. Germany expected 
the world to supply her gladly with all her needs, as a mark 
of good faith, and to encourage the timorous Allies she 
offered to let them advance to the Rhine. Now the Ger- 
mans affect to wonder why Germany is not completely 
supplied by the perfidious Allies, and why the garrisons, 
having been allowed to see the beautiful Rhine scenery, 
do not withdraw. Not only the ignorant classes, but those 
supposedly educated, take that attitude. They consider, 
apparently, that the armistice was an agreement for mutual 
benefit, and the idea that the war was anything but a draw, 
with the prestige all on the German side, has not yet pene- 
trated to the German mind." 

With the above — it was written in January — and the 
outward show of friendliness for the American Army of 
Occupation as a text, I examined scores of Germans of all 
classes, whom our sergeants picked out of the throngs 
that passed through our hands and pushed one by one 
into my little office overlooking the Rhine. Their attitude, 
their answers were always the same, parrot-like in their 
sameness. Before a week had passed I could have set 
down the replies, almost in their exact words, the instant 
the man to be interviewed appeared in the doorway, to 
click his heels resoundingly while holding his arms stiffly 
at his sides. As becomes a long-disciplined people, the 
German is certainly no individualist. Once one has a key 
to it, one can be just as sure what he is going to do, and 
how he is going to do it, as one can that duplicates of the 
shoes one has always worn are going to fit. Yet what 
did they really think, away down under their generations 

32 



GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

of discipline? This procession of men with their close- 
cropped heads and their china-blue eyes that looked at 
me as innocently as a Niimberg doll, who talked so glibly 
with apparent friendliness and perfect frankness, surely 
has some thoughts hidden away in the depths of their souls. 
Yet one seldom, if ever, caught a glimpse of them. Pos- 
sibly there were none there; the iron discipline of a half- 
century may have killed the hidden roots as well as destroyed 
the plant itself. In contrast with the sturdily independent 
American, sharply individualistic still in spite of his year 
or two of army training, these heel-clicking automatons 
were exasperating in their garrulous taciturnity. 

"What most characterizes the German," said Mosers, 
more than a century ago, "is obedience, respect for force." 
What probably struck the plain American doughboy even 
more than mere obedience was their passive docility, their 
immediate compliance with all our requirements. They 
could have been so mean, so disobedient in petty little ways 
without openly disobeying. Instead, they seemed to go 
out of their road to make our task of occupation easy. 
Their racial discipline not merely did not break down; 
it permeated every nook and comer. The very children 
never gave a gesture, a whisper of wilfulness; the family 
warning found them as docile as a lifetime of training had 
left the adults. It was easy to imagine French or American 
boys under the same conditions — all the bright little Hal- 
lowe'en tricks they would have concocted to make unpleasant 
the life of the abhorred enemy rulers. Was it not perhaps 
this, from the German point of view, criminally undisci- 
plined character of other races, as much as their own native 
brutality, that caused the armies of the Kaiser to inflict 
so many unfair punishments? Any traveler who has noted 
the abhorrence with which the German looks upon the sim- 
plest infraction of the most insignificant order — the mere 
entering by a "Verbotener Eingang" — that the American 

33 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

would disobey and pay his fine and go his way with a smile 
of amusement on his face, will not find it difiicult to visualize 
the red rage with which the German soldier beheld any lack 
of seriousness toward the stern and sacred commands of 
their armies of occupation. 

None of us guessed aright as to Germany's action in case 
of defeat. Talk of starvation though we will, she did not 
fight to a standstill, as our South did, for example. She 
gave proof of a strong faith in the old adage beginning 
"He who fights and runs away ..." She quit when the 
tide turned, not at the last crag of refuge, and one could not 
but feel less respect for her people accordingly. But what- 
ever remnant of estimation may have been left after their 
sudden abandonment of the field might have been enhanced 
by an occasional lapse from their docility, by a proof now 
and then that they were human, after all. Instead, we 
got something that verged very closely upon cringing, as a 
personal enemy one had just trounced might bow his thanks 
and offer to light his victor's cigar. It is impossible to 
believe that any one could be rendered so docile by mere 
orders from above. It is impossible to believe they had no 
hatred in their hearts for the nation that finally turned 
the balance of war against them. It must be habit, habit 
formed by those with superimposed rulers, as contrasted 
with those who have their word, or at least fancy they have, 
in their own government. 

That they should take the fortunes of war philosophically 
was comprehensible. The most chauvinistic of them must 
now and then have had an inkling that those who live 
by the sword might some day catch the flash of it over 
their own heads. Or it may be that they had grown so 
used to military rule that ours did not bother them. Except 
to their politicians, their ex-officers, and the like, who must 
have realized most keenly that some one else was "holding 
the bag," what real difference is there between being ruled 

34 



GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

by a just and not ungentle enemy from across the sea and 
by an iron-stern hierarchy in distant Berlin? Besides, 
has not Germany long contended that the stronger peoples 
have absolute rights over the weaker? Why, then, should 
they contest their own argument when they suddenly dis- 
covered, to their astonishment, that their claims to the 
position of superman were poorly based? The weak 
have no rights — it is the German himself who has said so. 
Was it this belief that gave their attitude toward us, out- 
wardly at least, a suggestion of almost Arabic fatalism? 
It is no such anomaly as it may seem that the German 
and the Turk should have joined forces; they have con- 
siderable in common — "Allah, II Allah, Thy will be done"! 
The last thing the Germans showed toward our Army of 
Occupation was enmity. Nothing pointed to a smoldering 
resentment behind their masks, as, for example, with the 
Mexicans. There was slight difference between an errand 
of liaison to a bureau of the German staff-officers left in 
Coblenz and similar commissions to the French or the 
Italians before the armistice — an atmosphere only a trifle 
more strained, which was natural in view of the fact that 
I came to order rather than to cajole. The observation 
balloon that rode the sky above our area, its immense 
Stars and Stripes visible even in unoccupied territory, 
was frequently pointed out with interest, never with any 
evidence of animosity. There was a constant stream of 
people, principally young men, through our offices, inquir- 
ing how they could most easily emigrate to America. Inci- 
dentally we were besieged by scores of "Americans" who 
spoke not a word of English, who had been "caught here 
by the war" and had in many cases killed time by serving 
in the German army, but who now demanded aU the priv- 
ileges which their "citizenship" was supposed to confer 
upon them. A German major wrote a long letter of applica- 
tion for admission into the American army, with the bland 
4 35 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

complacency with which a pedagogue whose school had 
been abolished might apply for a position in another. There 
was not a sign of resentment even against ' ' German-Ameri- 
cans" — as the Boche was accustomed to call them until he 
discovered the virtual non-existence of any such anomaly — 
for having entered the war against the old Fatherland. 
The government of their adopted country had ordered them 
to do so, and no one understands better than the German 
that government orders are issued to be obeyed. 

Some contended that the women in particular had a 
deep resentment against the American soldiers, that they 
were still loyal to the Kaiser and to the old order of things, 
that they saw in us the murderers of their sons and husbands, 
the jailers of their prisoners. On a few rare occasions I 
felt a breath of frigidity in the attitude of some grande dame 
of the haughtier class. But whether it was a definite policy 
of conciliation to win the friendship of America, in the hope 
that it would soften the blow of the Treaty of Peace, as a 
naughty boy strives to make up for his naughtiness at 
sight of the whip being taken down from its hook, or a 
mere "mothering instinct," the vast majority of our host- 
esses, even though war widows, went out of their way to 
make our stay with them pleasant. Clothes were mended, 
buttons sewed on unasked. Maids and housewives alike 
gave our quarters constant attention. The mass of Ameri- 
cans on the Rhine came with the impression that they 
would be forced to go heavily armed day and night. Except 
for the established patrols and sentries, the man or officer 
who "toted" a weapon anywhere in the occupied area 
could scarcely have aroused the ridicule of his comrades 
more had he appeared in sword and armor. There was, 
to be sure, a rare case of an American soldier being done 
to death by hoodlums in some drunken brawl, but, for the 
matter of that, so there was in France. 

Now and then one stumbled upon the sophistry that seems 

36 



GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

so established a trait in the German character. No cor- 
poration lawyer could have been more clever in finding 
loopholes in the proclamations issued by the Army of Occu- 
pation than those adherents of the "scrap of paper" fallacy 
who set out to do so. My host sent up word from time to 
time for permission to spend an evening with me over a 
bottle of well-aged Rhine wine with which his cellar seemed 
still to be liberally stocked. On one occasion the conversa- 
tion turned to several holes in the ceiling of my sumptuous 
parlor. They were the result, the pompous old judge 
explained, of an air raid during the last August of the war. 
A bomb had carried away the window-shutters, portions of 
the granite steps beneath, and had liberally pockmarked 
the stone fagade of the house. 

"It was horrible," he growled. "We all had to go down 
into the cellar, and my poor little grandson cried from 
fright. That is no way to make war, against the innocent 
non-combatants, and women and children." 

I did not trouble to ask him if he had expressed the same 
sentiments among his fellow club-members in, say. May, 
191 5, for his sophistry was too well trained to be caught in so 
simple a trap. 

Whatever the docility, the conciliatory attitude of our 
forced hosts, however, I have yet to hear that one of them 
ever expressed repentance for the horrors their nation 
loosed upon the world. The war they seemed to take as 
the natural, the unavoidable thing, just a part of life, as 
the gambler takes gambling, with no other regret than 
that it was their bad luck to lose. Like the gambler, 
they may have been sorry they made certain moves in the 
game; they may have regretted entering the game at all, 
as the gambler would who knew in the end that his adversary- 
had more money on his hip than he had given him credit 
for in the beginning. But it was never a regret for being 
a gambler. Did not Nietzsche say that to regret, to repent, 

37 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

is a sign of weakness ? Unless there was something under his 
mask that never showed a hint of its existence on the surface, 
the German is still a firm disciple of Nietzschean philosophy. 

There was much debate among American officers as to 
just what surge of feeling passed through the veins of a 
German of high rank forced to salute his conquerors. With 
rare exceptions, every Boche in uniform rendered the 
required homage with meticulous care. Now and then one 
carefully averted his eyes or turned to gaze into a shop- 
window in time to avoid the humiliation. But for the most 
part they seemed almost to go out of their way to salute, 
some almost brazenly, others with a half -friendly little bow. 
I shall long remember the invariable click of heels and the 
smart hand-to-cap of the resplendent old general with a 
white beard who passed me each morning on the route to 
our respective offices. 

That there was feeling under these brazen exteriors, 
however, was proved by the fact that most of the officers 
in the occupied area slipped quietly into civilian clothes, 
for no other apparent reason than to escape the unwelcome 
order. From the day of our entrance no German in uniform 
was permitted in our territory unless on official business, 
sanctioned by our authorities. But the term "uniform" 
was liberally interpreted. A discharged soldier, unable to 
invest in a new wardrobe, attained civilian status by ex- 
changing his ugly, round, red-banded fatigue-bonnet for a 
hat or cap; small boys were not rated soldiers simply 
because they wore cut-down uniforms. Then on March 
ist came a new order from our headquarters commanding 
all members of the German army in occupied territory 
never to appear in public out of uniform, always to carry- 
papers showing their presence in our area to be officially 
authorized, and to report to an American official every 
Monday morning. The streets of Coblenz blossomed 
out that day with more varieties of German uniforms than 

38 



GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

most members of the A. E. F. had ever seen outside a 
prisoner-of-war inclosure. 

It was easy to understand why Germans in uniform 
saluted — they were commanded to do so. But why did 
every male, from childhood up, in many districts, raise 
his hat to us with a subservient '''n Tag"; why the same 
words, with a hint of courtesy, from the women? Was it 
fear, respect, habit, design? It could scarcely have been 
sarcasm; the German peasantry barely knows the meaning 
of that. Why should a section foreman, whose only sug- 
gestion of a uniform was a battered old railway cap, go out 
of his way to render us military homage? Personally I am 
inclined to think that, had conditions been reversed, I should 
have climbed a tree or crawled into a culvert. But we came 
to wonder if they did not consider the salute a privilege. 

Only the well-dressed in the cities showed an attitude 
that seemed in keeping with the situation, from our point 
of view. They frequently avoided looking at us, pretended 
not to see us, treated us much as the Chinese take their 
"invisible" property-man at the theater. At the back door 
of our headquarters the pompous high priests of business 
and politics, or those haughty, well-set-up young men who, 
one could see at a glance, had been army officers, averted 
their eyes to hide the rage that burned within them when 
forced to stand their turn behind some slattern woman or 
begrimed workman. In a tramway or train now and then 
it was amusing to watch a former captain or major, weather- 
browned with service in the field, still boldly displaying 
his kaiserly mustache, still wearing his army leggings and 
breeches, looking as out of place in his civilian coat as a 
cowboy with a cane, as he half openly gritted his teeth at 
the "undisciplined" American privates who dared do as 
they pleased without so much as asking his leave. But 
it was no less amusing to note how superbly oblivious to 
his wrath were the merrymaking doughboys. 

39 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

The kaisexly mustache of world-wide fame, by the way, 
has largely disappeared, at least in the American sector. 
In fact, the over-modest lip decoration made famous by 
our most popular "movie" star seemed to be the vogue. 
More camouflage? More "Kamerad''f A gentle com- 
pliment to the Americans? Or was it merely the natural 
change of style, the passing that in time befalls all things, 
human or kaiser lichf 

Speaking of German officers, when the first inkling 
leaked out of Paris that Germany might be required by 
the terms of the Treaty of Peace to reduce her army to a 
hundred thousand men there was a suggestion of panic 
among our German acquaintances. It was not that they 
were eager to serve their three years as conscripts, as their 
fathers had done. There was parrot-like agreement that 
no government would ever again be able to force the man- 
hood of the land to that sacrifice. Nor was there any great 
fear that so small an army would be inadequate to the 
requirements of "democratized" Germany. The question 
was, "What on earth can we do with all our officers, if 
you allow us only four thousand or so?" Prohibition, I 
believe, raised the same grave problem with regard to our 
bartenders. But as we visualized our own army reduced 
to the same stem necessity the panic was comprehensible. 
What would we, under similar circumstances, do with 
many of our dear old colonels ? They would serve admirably 
as taxi-door openers along Fifth Avenue — ^were it not for 
their pride. They would scarcely make good grocery 
clerks; they were not spry enough, nor accurate enough at 
figures. However, the predicament is one the Germans 
can scarcely expect the Allies to solve for them. 

"War," said Voltaire, "is the business of Gemiany." 

One realized more and more the fact in that assertion as new 

details of the thorough militarization of land, population, 

and industry came to light under our occupancy. Fortifica- 

40 



GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

tions, labyrinths of secret tunnels, massive stores of every- 
thing that could by any possibility be of use in the com- 
plicated business of war ; every man up through middle age, 
who had still two legs to stand on, marked with his service 
in Mars's workshop ; there was some hint of militarization at 
every turn. Not the least striking of them was the aggres- 
sive propaganda in favor of war and of loyalty to the war 
lords. Not merely were there monuments, inscriptions, 
martial mottoes, to din the military inclination into the 
simple Volk wherever the eye turned. In the most miser- 
able little Gasthaus, with its bare floors and not half enough 
cover on the beds to make a winter night comfortable, 
huge framed pictures of martial nature stared down upon the 
shivering guest. Here hung a life-size portrait of Hinden- 
burg; there was a war scene of Bliicher crossing the Rhine; 
beyond, an ''Opfergaben des Volkes," in which a long line 
of simple laboring people had come to present with great 
deference their most cherished possession — a bent old 
peasant, a silver heirloom; a girl, her hair — on the altar 
of their rulers' martial ambition. It is doubtful whether 
the Germans have any conception of how widely this 
harvest of tares has overspread their national life. It may 
come to them years hence, when grim necessity has forced 
them to dig up the pernicious roots. 

But the old order was already beginning to show signs of 
change. On a government building over at Trier the first 
word of the lettering "Koniglicher HauptzoUamt " had been 
obliterated. In a little town down the Rhine the dingy 

HOTEL DEUTSCHER KAISER 
Diners i mk. 50 und hoher 
Logis von 2 mk. an 

had the word "Kaiser" painted over, though it was still 
visible through the whitewash, as if ready to come back at 
a new turn of events. 

41 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

The adaptability of the German as a merchant has long 
since been proved by his commercial success all over the 
world. It quickly became evident to the Army of Occupa- 
tion that he was not going to let his feelings — if he had any 
— interfere with business. As a demand for German uni- 
forms, equipment, insignia faded away behind the retreat- 
ing armies of the Kaiser, commerce instantly adapted itself 
to the new conditions. Women who had earned their liveli- 
hood or their pin-money for four years by embroidering 
shoulder-straps and knitting sword-knots for the soldiers 
in field gray quicldy turned their needles to making the 
ornaments for which the inqjiiries of the new-comers showed 
a demand. Shop-windows blossomed out overnight in a 
chaos of divisional insignia, of service stripes, with khaki 
cloth and the coveted shoulder-pins from brass bars to 
silver stars, with anything that could appeal to the Ameri- 
can doughboy as a suitable souvenir of his stay on the 
Rhine — and this last covers a multitude of sins indeed. 
Iron crosses of both classes were dangled before his eager 
eyes. The sale of these "highest prizes of German man- 
hood" to their enemies as mere pocket-pieces roused a 
howl of protest in the local papers, but the trinkets could 
still be had, if more or less sub rosa. Spiked helmets — 
he must be an uninventive or an absurdly truthful mem- 
ber of the new Watch on the Rhine who cannot show 
visible evidence to the amazed folks at home of having 
captured at least a dozen Boche officers and despoiled 
them of their headgear. Those helmets were carried off 
by truck-loads from a storehouse just across the Mo- 
selle; they loaded down the A. E. F. mails until it is 
strange there were ships left with space for soldiers home- 
ward bound. A sergeant marched into his captain's billet 
in an outlying town with a telescoped bundle of six hel- 
mets and laid them down with a snappy, "Nine marks 

each, sir." 

42 



GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

"Can you get me a half-dozen, too?" asked a visiting 
lieutenant. 

"Don't know, sir," replied the sergeant. "He made 
these out of some remnants he had left on hand, but he is 
not sure he can get any more material." 

If we had not awakened to our peril in time and the 
Germans had taken New York, would our seamstresses 
have made German flags and our merchants have promi- 
nently displayed them in their windows, tagged with the 
price? Possibly. We of the A. E. F. have learned some- 
thing of the divorce of patriotism from business since the 
days when the money-grabbers first descended upon us 
in the training-camps at home. The merchants of Coblenz, 
at any rate, were quite as ready to take an order for a 
Stars and Stripes six feet by four as for a red, white, and 
black banner. What most astonished, perhaps, the khaki- 
clad warriors who had just escaped from France was the 
German's lack of profiteering tendencies. Prices were not 
only moderate; they remained so in spite of the infliix of 
Americans and the constant drop in the value of the mark. 
The only orders on the subject issued by the American 
authorities was the ruling that prices must be the same for 
Germans and for the soldiers of occupation; nothing hin- 
dered merchants from raising their rates to all, yet this 
rarely happened even in the case of articles of almost 
exclusive American consumption. 

"Shoe-shine parlors," sometimes with the added entice- 
ment, "We Shine Your Hobnails," sprang up in every 
block and were so quickly filled with Yanks intent on obey- 
ing the placard to "Look Like a Soldier" that the pro- 
prietors had perforce to encourage their own timid people 
by posting the notice, "Germans Also Admitted." Barber 
shops developed hair carpets from sheer inability to find 
time to sweep out, and at that the natives were hard put 
to it to get rid of their own facial stubble. When the 

43 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

abhorred order against photography by members of the 
A. E. F. was suddenly and unexpectedly lifted, the camera- 
shops resembled the entrance to a ball-park on the day of 
the deciding game between the two big leagues. There 
was nothing timid or squeamish about German commerce. 
Shops were quite ready to display post-cards showing French 
ruins with chesty German officers strutting in the fore- 
ground, once they found that these appealed to the inde- 
fatigable and all-embracing American souvenir - hunter. 
Down in Cologne a German printing-shop worked overtime 
to get out an official history of the American 3d Division. 
In the cafes men who had been shooting at us three months 
before sat placidly sawing off our own popular airs and 
struggling to perpetrate in all its native horror that inex- 
cusable hubbub known as the "American jazz." The sign 
"American spoken here" met the eye at frequent intervals. 
Whether the wording was from ignorance, sarcasm, an 
attempt to be complimentary, or a sign of hatred of the 
English has not been recorded. There was not much 
call for the statement even when it was true, for it was 
astounding what a high percentage of the Army of Occupa- 
tion spoke enough German to "get by." The French never 
tired of showing their surprise when a Yank addressed 
them in their own tongue ; the Germans took it as a matter 
of course, though they often had the ill manners to insist 
on speaking "English" whatever the fluency of the customer 
in their own language, a barbaric form of impoliteness 
which the French are usually too instinctively tactful to 
commit. 

On the banks of the Rhine in the heart of ' ' Duddlebug " — 
keep it dark! It is merely the American telephone girls' 
name for Coblenz, but it would be a grievous treachery 
if some careless reader let the secret leak out to Berlin — 
there stands one of the forty-eight palaces that belonged 
to the ex-Kaiser. Its broad lawn was covered now with 

44 



GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

hastily erected Y. M. C. A. wooden recreation-halls that 
contrast strangely with the buildings of the surrounding 
city, constructed to stand for centuries, and which awaken 
in the German breast a speechless wrath that these irreverent 
beings from overseas should have dared to perpetrate such a 
Use-majesU on the sacred precincts. But the Schloss itself 
was not occupied by the Americans, and there have been 
questions asked as to the reason — whether those in high 
standing in our army were showing a sympathy for the 
monarch who took Dutch leave which they did not grant the 
garden variety of his ex-subjects. The allegation has no 
basis. Upon his arrival the commander of the Army of 
Occupation gave the palace a careful "once over" and 
concluded that the simplest solution was to leave its offices 
to the German authorities who were being ousted from 
more modern buildings. As to the residence portion, the 
wily old caretaker pointed out to the general that there 
was neither gas, electricity, nor up-to-date heating facilities. 
In the immense drawing- and throne-rooms there was, to 
be sure, space enough to billet a battalion of soldiers, but 
it would, perhaps, have been too typically Prussian an 
action to have risked a repetition of what occurred at Ver- 
sailles in 187 1 by turning over this mess of royal bric-a-brac 
and the glistening polished floors to the tender care of a 
hobnailed band of concentrated virility. 

Plainly impressive enough outwardly, the "living "-rooms 
of the castle would probably be dubbed a "nightmare" 
by the American of simple tastes. The striving of the Ger- 
mans to ape the successful nations of antiquity, the Greeks, 
and particularly the Romans, in art and architecture, as 
well as in empire-building, is in evidence here, as in so many 
of the ambitious residences of Coblenz. The result is a 
new style of "erudite barbarism," as Romain Rolland calls 
it, "laborious efforts to show genius which result in the banal 
and grotesque." The heavy, ponderous luxury and melange 

45 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

of style was on the whole oppressive. In the entire series 
of rooms there was almost nothing really worth looking at 
for itself, except a few good paintings and an occasional 
insignificant little gem tucked away in some comer. They 
were mainly filled with costly and useless bric-a-brac, royal 
presents of chiefly bad taste, from Sultan, Pope, and poten- 
tate, all stuck about with a very stiff air and the customary 
German over-ornateness. The place looked far less like a 
residence than like a museum which the defenseless owner 
had been forced to build to house the irrelevant mass of 
junk that had been thrust upon him. Costly ivory sets of 
dominoes, chess, table croquet, what not, showed how these 
pathetic beings, kings and emperors, passed their time, 
which the misfortune of rank did not permit them to spend 
wandering the streets or grassy fields like mere human 
beings. 

The old caretaker had some silly little anecdote for 
almost every article he pointed out. He had taken thou- 
sands of visitors through the castle — ^it was nevfer inhabited 
more than a month or two a year even before the war — 
and the only thing that had ever been stolen was one of 
the carved ivory table-croquet mallets, which had been 
taken by an American Red Cross nurse. I was forced to 
admit that we had people like that, even in America. In 
the royal chapel — now an American Protestant church — 
the place usually taken by the pipe organ served as a half- 
hidden balcony for the Kaiser, with three glaring red-plush 
chairs — those ugly red-plush chairs, no one of which looked 
comfortable enough actually to sit in, screamed at one all 
over the building — with a similar, simpler embrasure op- 
posite for the emperor's personal servants. The main 
floor below was fully militarized, like all Germany, the 
pews on the right side being reserved for the army and 
inscribed with large letters from front to rear — ^"Generali- 
tat," "General Kommando," "Offiziere und Hochbeam- 

46 - 




THE RHINE STEAMERS RAN AS USUAL, BUT THEY WERE COMMANDED BY MARINES 
AND CARRIED AMERICAN DOUGHBOYS AS PASSENGERS 




AMERICAN NURSES ENTERTAINING AUSTRALIAN SOLDIERS ON AN EXCURSION 

UP THE RHINE 



GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

ter," and so on, in careful order of rank. Red slip-covers 
with a design of crowns endlessly repeated protected from 
dust most of the furniture in the salons and drawing-rooms, 
and incidentally shielded the eye, for the furniture itself 
was far uglier than the covering. 

The most pompous of nouveaux riches could not have 
shown more evidence of self -worship in their decorations. 
Immense paintings of themselves and of their ancestors 
covered half the HohenzoUern walls, showing them in 
heroic attitudes and gigantic size, alone with the world at 
their feet, or in the very thick of battles, looking calm, 
collected, and unafraid amid generals and followers who, 
from Bismarck down, had an air of fear which the royal 
central figure discountenanced by contrast. Huge por- 
traits of princes, kurfursten, emperors, a goodly percentage 
of them looking not quite intelligent enough to make effi- 
cient night-watchmen, stared haughtily from all sides. A 
picture of the old HohenzoUern castle, from which the 
family — and many of the world's woes — originally sprang, 
occupied a prominent place, as an American "Napoleon 
of finance" might hang in his Riverside drawing-room a 
painting of the old farm from which he set out to conquer 
the earth. Much alleged art by members of the royal 
family, as fondly preserved as Lizzy's first — and last — school 
drawing, stood on easels or tables in prominent, insistent 
positions. Presents from the Sultan were particularly nu- 
merous, among them massive metal tablets with bits in 
Arabic from the Koran. One of these read, according to 
the caretaker, "He who talks least says most." Unfortu- 
nately, the Kaiser could not read Arabic, hence the particu- 
larly pertinent remark was lost upon him. In an obscure 
corner hung one of the inevitable German cuckoo clocks, 
placed there, if my guide was not mistaken, by a former 
empress in memory of the spot where she plighted her troth. 
Poor, petty little romances of royalty! Probably it was 

47 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

not so much coquetry as an effort to escape the pseudo- 
magnificence of those appalling rooms that drove her into 
the comer. How could any one be comfortable, either 
in mind or in body, with such junk about them, much less 
pass the romantic hours of life in their midst? I should 
much have preferred to have my Verlobungskuss in a railway 
station. 

Only the library of the ex-empress, with its German, 
French, and English novels and its works of piety, showed 
any sign of real human individuality. Her favorite picture 
hung there — a painting showing a half-starved woman weep- 
ing and praying over an emaciated child, called "The 
Efficacy of Prayer." No doubt the dear empress got much 
sentimental solace out of it — just before the royal dinner 
was announced. The Kaiser's private sleeping-room, on 
the other hand, was simplicity itself — far less sumptuous 
than my own a few blocks away. He had last slept there, 
said the caretaker, in the autumn of 19 14, while moving 
toward the western front with his staff. 

"And all this belongs to the state now, since Germany 
has become a republic?" I remarked. 

"Only a part of it," replied my guide. "We are making 
up lists of the private and crown property, and his own 
possessions will be returned to the Kaiser." 

The outstanding feature of the visit was not the castle 
itself, however, but the attitude of this lifelong servant of 
the imperial owner. The assertion that no man is a hero 
to his valet applies, evidently, clear up to emperors. The 
caretaker was a former soldier in a Jager and forestry battal- 
ion, bom in the Tiiringerwald fifty-six years ago, a man 
of intelligence and not without education. He had been 
one of hundreds who applied for a position in the imperial 
household in 1882, winning the coveted place because he 
came "with an armful of fine references." To him the 
Kaiser and all his clan were just ordinary men, for whom he 

48 



GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

evidently felt neither reverence nor disdain. Nor, I am 
sure, was he posing democracy; he looked too tired and 
indifferent to play a part for the benefit of my uniform. 
The many gossipy tales of royalty, semi-nobility, and igno- 
bility with which he spiced our stroll were told neither with 
ill feeling nor with boastf ulness ; they were merely his every- 
day thoughts, as a printer might talk of his presses or a 
farmer of his crops. 

Wilhelm der Erste, the first Kaiser, was a good man in 
every way, he asserted. He had seen him die. He had been 
called to bring him his last glass of water. Bismarck and a 
dozen others were gathered about his bed, most of them 
kneeling — the picture of Bismarck on his knees was not 
easy to visualize somehow — "and the emperor died with 
great difficulty" — my informant demonstrated his last 
moments almost too realistically. The Kaiser — ^he who 
wrecked the Hohenzollem ship — was a very ordinary man, 
possibly something above the average in intelligence, but 
he did not have a fair chance in life. There was his useless 
arm, and then his ear. For forty years he had suffered 
atrociously from an abscess in his left ear. The caretaker 
had seen him raging mad with it. No treatment ever 
helped him. No, it was not cancer, though his mother died 
of that after inhuman suffering, but it was getting nearer 
and nearer to his brain, and he could not last many years 
now. Then there was his arm. No, it was not inherited, 
but resulted from the criminal carelessness of a midwife. 
For years he used an apparatus in the hope of getting some 
strength into that arm, tying his left hand to a lever and 
working it back and forth with his right. But it never did 
any good. He never got to the point where he could lift 
that arm without taking hold of it with the other. He 
grew extraordinarily clever in covering up his infirmity; 
when he rode he placed the reins in the useless left hand 
with the right, and few would have realized that they were 

49 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

just lying there, without any grasp on them at all. He 
kept that arm out of photographs; he kept it turned away 
from the public with a success that was almost superhuman. 
On the whole, he was a man with a good mind. "No one 
of average intelligence can help being a knowing man if he 
has Ministers and counselors and all the wise men of the realm 
coming to him every day and telling him everything." But 
he had too much power, too much chance to rule. He dis- 
missed Bismarck, "a man such as there is only one born 
in a century," when he was himself still far too young to be 
his own Chancellor. He never could take advice; when his 
Ministers came to him they were not allowed to tell him 
what they thought ; they could only salute and do what he 
ordered them to do. And he never understood that he 
should choose his words with care because they made 
more impression than those of an ordinary man. 

It was only when I chanced upon his favorite theme — 
we had returned to his little lodge, decorated with the 
antlers and tusks that were the trophies of his happiest 
days — that the caretaker showed any actual enthusiasm 
for the ex-Kaiser. I asked if it were true that the former 
emperor was a good shot. " Ausgezeichnet! " he cried, his 
weary eyes lighting up ; "he was a marvelous shot! I have 
myself seen him kill more than eight hundred creatures in 
one day — and do not forget that he had to shoot with one 
arm at that." He '-did not mention how much better 
record than that the War Lord had made on the western 
front, nor the precautions his long experience in the "hunt- 
ing-field" had taught him to take against any possible 
reprisal by his stalked and cornered game. 

The Crown Prince, he had told me somewhere along the 
way in the oppressive royal museum, was a very nice little 
boy, but his educators spoiled him. Since manhood he 
had been "somewhat leichtsinnig" — it was the same expres- 
sion, the old refrain, that I had heard wherever the Kaiser's 

50 



GERMANY UNDER THE AMERICAN HEEL 

heir was mentioned — "and his mind runs chiefly on women." 
In one of the rooms we had paused before a youthful por- 
trait of Queen Victoria. "I have seen her often," remarked 
my guide, in his colorless voice. "She came often to visit 
us, at many of the palaces, and the first thing she invariably 
called for the moment she arrived was cognac." It may 
have been merely a little side-slap at the hated English, 
but there was something in that particular portrait that 
suggested that the queen would have made a very lively 
little grisette, had fate chanced to cast her in that role. 

Bismarck was plainly the old servant's favorite among 
the titled throng he had served and observed. "When the 
second Kaiser died, "he reminisced, "after his very short reign 
— ^he was a good man, too, though proud — ^he gave me a 
message that I was to hand over to Bismarck himself, in 
person. The long line of courtiers were aghast when I 
insisted on seeing him; they stared angrily when I was 
admitted ahead of them to his private study. I knocked, 
and there was a noise inside between a grunt and a growl" — 
some of our own dear colonels, I mused, had at least that 
much Bism.arckian about them — "and after I opened the 
door I had to peer about for some time before I could see 
where he was, the tobacco smoke was so thick. He always 
smoked like that. But he was an easy man to talk to, 
if you really had a good reason for coming to see him, and 
I had. When I went out all the courtiers stared at me with 
wonder, but I just waved a hand to them and said, 'The 
audience is over, gentlemen!' Ah yes, I have seen much 
in my day, aber," he concluded, resignedly, as he accompanied 
me to the door of his lodge, "alle diese gute Zeiten sind leider 
vorbei.** 
5 



Ill 

THOU SHALT NOT . . . FRATERNIZE 

T^HE armies of occupation have been credited with the 
^ discovery of a new crime, one not even impHed in the 
Ten Commandments. Indeed, misinformed mortals have 
usually listed it among the virtues. It is "fraternization." 
The average American — unless his habitat be New England 
— cannot remain aloof and haughty. Particularly the 
unsophisticated doughboy, bubbling over with life and 
spirits, is given to making friends with whatever branch of 
the human family he chances to find about him. More- 
over, he was grateful for the advance in material comfort, 
if not in friendliness, of Germany as compared with the 
mutilated portion of France he had known. He did not, 
in most cases, stop to think that it was the war which had 
made those differences. It was an every-day experience 
to hear some simple country boy in khaki remark to his 
favorite officer in a slow, puzzled voice, "Sa-ay, Lieutenant, 
you know I like these here Boshies a lot better than them 
there Frogs." The wrangles and jealousies with their 
neighbors, on which the overcrowded peoples of Europe 
feed from infancy, were almost unsuspected by these grown- 
up children from the wide land of opportunity. The French 
took alarm. There seemed to be danger that the sale 
Boche would win over les Am^ricains, at least the sympathy 
of the men in the ranks, by his insidious "propaganda." 
As a matter of fact, I doubt whether he could have done so. 

52 



THOU SHALT NOT . . . FRATERNIZE 

The Germans rather overdid their friendliness. Particularly 
when it bore any suggestion of cringing, deliberate or 
natural, it defeated itself, for, simple as he may be in matters 
outside his familiar sphere, the American soldier has an 
almost feminine intuition in catching, eventually, a some- 
what hazy but on the whole true conception of the real 
facts. But our allies were taking no chances. A categori- 
cal order — some say it emanated from Foch himself — 
warned the armies of occupation that there must be "no 
fraternization." 

The interpretation of the order varied. As was to be 
expected, the Americans carried it out more rigorously 
than did their three allies along the Rhine. Its application 
also differed somewhat in separate regions within our own 
area. At best complete enforcement was impossible. 
With soldiers billeted in every house, what was to hinder a 
lovelorn buck from making friends with the private who 
was billeted in her house and going frequently to visit him? 
On cold winter evenings one rarely passed a pair of Ameri- 
can sentries beside their little coal-fires without seeing a 
slouchy youth or two in the ugly round cap without vizor 
which we had so long associated only with prisoners of 
war, or a few shivering and hungry girls, hovering in the 
vicinity, eying the soldiers with an air which suggested 
that they were willing to give anything for a bit of warmth 
or the leavings of the food the sentries were gorging. 
Whether they merely wanted company or aspired to soap 
and chocolate, there was nothing to prevent them getting 
warmer when there were no officers in sight. 

The soldiers had their own conception of the meaning 
of fraternization. Buying a beer, for instance, was not 
fraternizing; tipping the waiter who served it was — unless 
he happened to be an attractive barmaid. Taking a walk 
or shaking hands with a German man was to disobey the 
order; strolling in the moonlight with his sister, or even 

S3 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

kissing her under cover of a convenient tree-trunk, was not. 
The interrelation of our warriors and the civilian population 
was continually popping up in curious little details. To 
the incessant demand of children for "Schewing Kum," 
as familiar, if more guttural, as in France, the regulation 
answer was no longer "No compree," but "No fraternize." 
Boys shrilling "Along the Wabash" or "Over There," little 
girls innocently calling out to a shocked passer-by in khaki 
some phrase that is more common to a railroad construction 
gang than to polite society, under the impression that it was 
a kindly word of greeting, showed how the American in- 
fluence was spreading. "Snell" had taken the place of 
"toot sweet" in the soldier vocabulary. German schools 
of the future are likely to teach that ' ' spuds " is the American 
word for what the "verdammte Engldnder" calls potatoes. 
When German station-guards ran along the platforms 
shouting, "Vorsicht!" at the approach of a train, American 
soldiers with a touch of the native tongue translated it 
into their lingo and added a warning, "Heads up!" The 
adaptable Boche caught the words — or thought he did — 
and thereafter it was no unusual experience to hear the 
arrival of a Schnellzug prefaced with shouts of, "Hets ub!" 
In the later days of the occupation the Yank was more 
apt to be wearing a "Gott mit Uns" belt than the narrow 
web one issued by his supply company, and that belt was 
more likely than not to be girdled round with buttons and 
metal rosettes from German uniforms, as the original 
American wore the scalps of his defeated enemies. Our 
intelligence police frequently ran down merchants or manu- 
facturers guilty of violating the fraternization order by 
making or offering for sale articles with the German and the 
American flags intertwined, pewter rings bearing the in- 
signia of some American division and the iron cross ; alleged 
meerschaum pipes decorated with some phrase expressive 
of Germany's deep love for America in spite of the recent 

54 




THE FORMER CROWN PRINCE IN HIS OFFICIAL FACE, ATTENDING THE FUNERAL 

OF A GERMAN OFFICER AND COUNT, WHOSE MILITARY ORDERS ARE CARRIED 

ON THE CUSHION IN FRONT 




THE HEIR TO THE TOPPLED THRONE WEARING HIS UNOFFICIAL AND MORE 
CHARACTERISTIC EXPRESSION 



THOU SHALT NOT . . . FRATERNIZE 

"misunderstanding." The wiseacres saw in all this a 
subtle "propaganda," cleverly directed from Berlin. I 
doubt whether it was anything more than the German 
merchant's incorrigible habit of making what he can sell, 
of fitting his supply to his customer's wishes, however 
absurd these may seem to him. 

Up to the I St of February Americans on detached ser- 
vice in Germany ate where they chose. With the non- 
fraternization order came the command to patronize only 
the restaurants run by the army or its auxiliary societies. 
The purpose was double — to shut another avenue to the 
fratemizer and to leave to the Germans their own scanty 
food store. This question of two widely different sources 
of supply side by side required constant vigilance. When 
two lakes of vastly different levels are separated only by 
a thin wall it is to be expected that a bit of water from the 
upper shall spill over into the lower. A pound can of cocoa 
cost 50 marks in a German shop — if it could be had at all ; 
a better pound sold for i mk. 25 in our commissary. A 
can of butter for which a well-to-do citizen would gladly 
have given a week's income was only a matter of a couple 
of dollars for the man in khaki. A bar of soap, a tablet of 
chocolate, a can of jam, many of the simple little things 
that had become imattainable luxuries to the mass of the 
people about us, cost us no more than they did at home 
before the war. Even if there was no tendency to profit 
by these wide discrepancies — and with the vast percentage 
of our soldiers there was not — the natural tender-hearted- 
ness of America's fighting-man moved him to transgress 
orders a bit in favor of charity. Much as one may hate the 
Boche, it is hard to watch an anemic little child munch a 
bare slice of disgusting war-bread, knowing that you can 
purchase a big white loaf made of genuine flour for a paltry 
ten cents. 

There were curious ramifications in this "fraternization" 

55 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

question. Thus, what of the American lieutenant whose 
father came over from his home in Diisseldorf or Mannheim 
to visit his son ? By strict letter of the law they should 
not speak to each other. What advice could one give a 
Russian-American soldier whose brother was a civilian in 
Coblenz? What should the poor Yank do whose German 
mother wired him that she was coming from Leipzig to 
see him, little guessing that for him to be seen in public 
with any woman not in American uniform was an invitation 
to the first M. P. who saw him to add to the disgruntled 
human collection in the "brig"? 

I chanced to be the "goat" in a curious and embarrassing 
situation that grew quite naturally out of the non-fraterniz- 
ing order. It was down the river at Andernach, a town 
which, in the words of the doughboy, boasts "the only 
cold-water geyser in the world — except the Y. M. C. A." 
A divisional staff had taken over the "palace" of a family 
of the German nobility, who had fled to Berlin at our 
approach. One day the daughter of the house unexpectedly 
returned, alone but for a maid. She happened to be not 
merely young and beautiful — far above the average German 
level in the latter regard — but she had all those outward 
attractions which good breeding and the unremitting care 
of trained guardians from birth to maturity give the fortu- 
nate members of the human family. She was exactly the 
type the traveler in foreign lands is always most anxious 
to meet, and least successful in meeting. On the evening 
of her arrival the senior officer of the house thought to 
soften the blow of her unpleasant home-coming by inviting 
her to dinner with her unbidden guests. The little circle 
was charmed with her tout ensemble. They confided to 
one another that she would stand comparison with any 
American girl they had ever met — which was the highest 
tribute in their vocabulary. She seemed to find the com- 
pany agreeable herself. As they rose from the table she 

56 



THOU SHALT NOT . . . FRATERNIZE 

asked what time breakfast would be served in the morning. 
Thanks to the uncertainty of her EngHsh, she had mistaken 
the simple courtesy for a "standing invitation." 

The officers looked at one another with mute appeal in 
their eyes. Nothing would have pleased them better than 
to have their grim circle permanently graced by so charm- 
ing an addition. But what of the new order against frat- 
ernization? Some day an inspector might drift in, or the 
matter reach the erect ears of that mysterious and dreaded 
department hidden under the pseudonym of "G-2-B." 
Besides, the officers were all conscientious young men who 
took army orders seriously and scorned to use any sophistry 
in their interpretation. Furthermore, though it hurt keenly 
to admit such a slanderous thought, it was within the range 
of possibilities that the'' young lady was a spy, sent here 
with the very purpose of trying to ingratiate herself into the 
circle which had so naively opened itself to her. It was 
known that her family had been in personal touch with the 
Kaiser; for all her "American manner, " she made no secret 
of being German through and through. What could have 
been more in keeping with the methods of Wilhelmstrasse 
than the suggestion that she return to her own home and 
pass on to Berlin any rumors she might chance to pick up 
from her unwelcome guests? 

Plainly she must be gotten rid of at once. None of the 
officers, however, felt confidence enough in his German 
to put it to so crucial a test. Whence, it being my fortune 
to drop in on a friend among the perplexed Americans just 
at that moment, I was unanimously appointed to the gentle 
task of banishing the lady from her own dining-room. 

It was at the end of a pleasant little luncheon — the sixth 
meal which the daughter of the house had graciously at- 
tended. The conversation had been enlightening, the at- 
mosphere most congenial, the young lady more unostenta- 
tiously beautiful than ever. We reduced the audience to 

57 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

her coming humiliation as low as possible by softly dis- 
missing the junior members, swallowed our throats, and 
began. Nothing, we assured her, had been more pleasant 
to us since our arrival in Germany than the privilege of 
having her as a guest at our simple mess. Nothing we could 
think of — short of being ordered home at once — ^would 
have pleased us more than to have her permanently grace 
our board. But . . . fortunately our stiff uniform collars 
helped to keep our throats in place . . . she had possibly 
heard of the new army order, a perfectly ridiculous ruling, 
to be sure, particularly under such circumstances as these, 
but an army order for all that — and no one could know better 
than she, the daughter and granddaughter of German high 
officers, that army orders are meant to be obeyed — wherein 
Pershing himself commanded us to have no more relations 
with the civilian population than were absolutely unavoid- 
able. Wherefore we ... we ... we trusted she would 
understand that this was only the official requirement and 
in no way represented our own personal inclinations . . . 
we were compelled to request that she confine herself there- 
after to the upper floor of the house, as her presence on 
our floor might easily be misunderstood. Her maid no 
doubt could prepare her meals, or there was a hotel a few 
yards up the street. ... 

The charming little smile of gratitude with which she 
had listened to the prelude had faded to a puzzled interest 
as the tone deepened, then to a well-mastered amazement 
at the effrontery of the climax. With a constrained, "Is 
that all?" she rose to her feet, and as we kicked our chairs 
from under us she passed out with a genuinely imperious 
carriage, an icy little bow, her beautiful face suffused with 
a crimson that would have made a mere poppy look color- 
less by comparison. We prided ourselves on having been 
extremely diplomatic in our handling of the matter, but 
no member of that mess ever again received anything 

S8 



THOU SHALT NOT . . . FRATERNIZE 

better than the barest shadow of a frigid bow from the yoiing 
lady, followed at a respectful distance by her maid, whom 
they so often met on her way to the hotel a few yards up 
the street. 

If it were not within the province of a soldier to criti- 
cize orders, one might question whether it would not have 
been better to allow regulated "fraternizing" than to 
attempt to suppress it entirely. Our soldiers, perme- 
ated through and through, whether consciously or other- 
wise, with many of those American ideals, that point of 
view, which we are eager for the German Volk to grasp, 
that there may be no more kaisers and no more deliberately 
built-up military assaults upon the world, would have been 
the most effective propaganda in our favor that could have 
been devised to loose upon the German nation. Merely 
their naive little stories of how they live at home would 
in time have awakened a discontent in certain matters, 
spiritual rather than material, that would have been most 
salutary. But we committed our customary and familiar 
American error of refusing to compromise with human 
nature, of attempting impossible suppression instead of 
accepting possible regulation, with the result that those 
ineradicable plants that might have grown erect and gay 
in the sunshine developed into pale-faced, groveling mon- 
strosities in the cellars and hidden corners. Our allies 
in the neighboring areas had the same non-fraternizing 
order, yet by not attempting to swallow it whole they 
succeeded, probably, in digesting it better. 

There was a simple little way of fraternizing in Coblenz 
without risking the heavy hand of an M. P. on your shoulder. 
It was to just have it happen by merest chance that the 
seat of the Frdulein who had taken your eye be next your 
own at the municipal theater. It grew increasingly popular 
with both officers and enlisted men, that mode^ little 
Stadttheater. The Germans who, before our arrival, had 

59 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

been able to drift in at the last moment and be sure of a 
seat, were forced to come early in the day and stand in line 
as if before a butter-shop. The Kronloge, or royal box, 
belonged now to the general commanding the Army of 
Occupation — until six each evening, when its eighteen 
seats might be disposed of to ordinary people, though the 
occupants even in that case were more likely than not to 
be girdled by the Sam Browne belt. Some observers make 
the encouraging assertion that there will be more devotees 
of opera in America when the quarter-million who kept 
the watch on the Rhine return home. There was a tendency 
to drift more and more toward the Stadttheater, even on the 
part of some whom no one would have dared to accuse of 
aspiring to "high-brow" rating, though it must be admitted 
that the "rag" and "jazz" and slap-stick to which the 
"Y" and similar well-meaning camp-followers, steeped in 
the "tired business man" fallacy, felt obliged to confine 
their efforts in entertaining "the boys," did not play to 
empty houses. 

The little Stadttheater gave the principal operas, not merely 
of Germany, but of France and Italy, and occasional plays, 
chiefly from their own classics. They were usually well 
staged, though long drawn out, after the manner of the 
German, who can seldom say his say in a few succinct 
words and be done as can the Frenchman. The operas, too, 
had a heaviness in spots — such as those, for instance, under 
the feet of the diaphanous nymphs of one hundred and sixty- 
five pounds each who cavorted about the trembling stage — 
which did not exactly recall the Opera in Paris. But it 
would be unfair to compare the artistic advantages of a city 
of eighty thousand with those of the "capital of the world." 
Probably the performances in Coblenz would have rivaled 
those in any but the two or three largest French cities, and 
it would be a remarkable town "back in little old U. S. A." 
that could boast such a theater, offering the best things 

60 



THOU SHALT NOT . . . FRATERNIZE 

of the stage at prices quite within reach of ordinary people. 
When one stopped to reflect, those prices were astonishing. 
The best seat in the Kronloge was but 5 mk. 50, a bare half- 
dollar then, only $1.25 at the normal pre-war exchange, and 
accommodations graded down to quite tolerable places in 
whatever the Germans call their "peanut gallery" at nine 
cents! All of which does not mean that the critical opera- 
goer would not gladly endure the quintupled cost for the 
privilege of attending a performance at the Op6ra Comique 
at Paris. 

The question of fraternization and the ubiquitous one of 
German food shortage were not without their connection. 
Intelligence officers were constantly running down rumors 
of too much sympathy of our soldiers for the hungry pop- 
ulation. The assertion that Germany had been "starved 
to her knees," however, was scarcely borne out by observa- 
tions in the occupied area. It is true that in Coblenz 
even the authorized quantities — seven pounds of potatoes, 
two hundred grams of meat, seven ounces of sugar, and so on 
per person each week, were high in price and not always 
available. Milk for invalids and those under seven was 
easier to order than to obtain. A notice in the local papers 
to "Bring your egg and butter tickets on Monday and get 
two cold-storage eggs and forty grams of oleomargarine" 
was cause for town-wide rejoicing. Poor old horses that had 
faithfully served the A. E. F. to the end of their strength 
were easily auctioned at prices averaging a thousand marks 
each, in spite of the requirement that a certificate be pro- 
duced within a week showing where they had been slaugh- 
tered. There was always a certain Schleichhandel, or under- 
hand dealing, going on between the wealthy in the cities 
and the well-stocked peasants. Rancid butter, to be had 
of excellent quality before the war at two marks, cost in 
"underground" commerce anything from fifty marks up 
which the happy man who found it was in a condition to 

61 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

pay. Contrasted with this picture, the wages of an eight- 
hour day were seldom over five marks for unskilled, or more 
than ten for skilled labor. The out-of-work-insurance 
system, less prevalent in our area than "over in Germany," 
made it almost an advantage to be unemployed. A citizen 
of Dusseldorf offered a wanderer in the streets eight marks 
for a day's work in his stable. Many a man would gladly 
have done the task for three marks before the war. The 
wanderer cursed the citizen roundly. "You have the 
audacity," he cried, "to ask me to toil all day for two 
marks!" ''Two marks?" gasped the citizen; "you misun- 
derstood me. I said eight." "I heard you say eight," 
shouted the workman, "and is not eight just two more than 
the six we get under the unemployment act? Pest with 
your miserable two marks! If you want to pay me ten 
for the day — that is, sixteen in all . . ." He did not add 
that by going out into the country with his unearned six 
marks he could buy up food and return to the city to sell 
it at a handsome profit, but the citizen did not need to be 
reminded of that oppressive fact. 

It was under such conditions as these that the civilians 
about us lived while we gorged ourselves on the full army 
ration in the hotels and restaurants we had taken over. 
There was always a long and eager waiting line where any 
employment of civilians by the Americans carried with it 
the right to army food; in many cases it became necessary 
to confine the opportunity to war widows or others whose 
breadwinners had been killed. 

A man who rented his motor-boat to our Marine Corps 
at forty -five marks a day and food for himself brought his 
brother along without charge, both of them living well on 
the one ration. The poor undoubtedly suffered. Where 
haven't they? Where do they not, even in times of peace? 
So did we, in fact, in spite of our unlimited source of supply. 
For the barbarous German cooking reduced our perfectly 

62 



THOU SHALT NOT . . . FRATERNIZE 

respectable fare to something resembling in looks, smell, 
and taste the "scow" of a British forecastle. In France 
we had come to look forward to meal-time as one of the 
pleasant oases of existence; on the Rhine it became again 
just a necessary ordeal to be gotten over with as soon as 
possible. If we were at first inclined to wonder what the 
chances were of the men who had been facing us with ma- 
chine-guns three months before poisoning us now, it soon 
died out, for they served us as deferentially, and far more 
quickly, with comparative obliviousness to tips, than had 
the gargons beyond the Vosges. 

The newspapers complained of a "physical deterioration 
and mental degeneration from lack of nourishing food 
that often results in a complete collapse of the nervous 
system, bringing on a state of continual hysteria." We 
saw something of this, but there were corresponding advan- 
tages. Diabetes and similar disorders that are relieved 
by the starvation treatment had vastly decreased. My 
host complained that his club, a regal building then open 
only to American officers, had lost one- third of its member- 
ship during the war, not in numbers, but in weight, an 
average of sixty pounds each. Judging from his still not 
diaphanous form, the falling off had been an advantage 
to the club's appearance, if not to its health. But one 
cannot always gage the health and resistance of the German 
by his outward appearance. He is racially gifted with 
red cheeks and plump form. The South American Indian 
of the highlands also looks the picture of robust health, 
yet he is certainly underfed and dies easily. In a well-to-do 
city like Coblenz appearances were particularly deceiving. 
The bulk of the population was so well housed, so well 
dressed, outwardly so prosperous, that it was hard to 
realize how greatly man's chief necessity, food, was lacking. 
In many a mansion to open the door at meal-time was to 
catch a strong scent of cheap and unsavory cooking that 

63 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

recalled the customary aroma of our lowest tenements. 
Healthy as many of them looked, there was no doubt that 
for the past year or two the Germans, particularly the old 
and the very young, succumbed with surprising rapidity 
to ordinarily unimportant diseases. If successful mer- 
chants were beefy and war profiteers rotund, they were 
often blue under the eyes. An officer of the chemical 
division of our army who conducted a long investigation 
within the occupied area found that while the bulk of food 
should have been sufficient to keep the population in average 
health, the number of calories was barely one-third what 
the human engine requires. 

The chief reason for this was that food had become more 
and more Ersatz — substitute articles, ranging all the way 
from "something almost as good" to the mere shadow of 
what it pretended to be. "We have become an Ersatz 
nation," wailed the German press, "and have lost in con- 
sequence many of our good qualities. Ersatz butter, 
Ersatz bread. Ersatz jam. Ersatz clothing — everything is 
becoming Ersatz.'^ A firm down the river went so far as 
to announce an Ersatz meat, called "Fino," which was 
apparently about as satisfactory as the Ersatz beer which 
the new kink in the Constitution is forcing upon Americans 
at home. Nor was the substitution confined to food 
articles, though in other things the lack was more nearly 
amusing than serious. Prisoners taken in our last drives 
nearly all wore Ersatz shirts, made of paper. Envelopes 
bought in Germany fell quickly apart because of the Ersatz 
paste that failed to do its duty. Painters labored with 
Ersatz daubing material because the linseed-oil their trade 
requires had become Ersatz lard for cooking purposes. 
Rubber seemed to be the most conspicuous scarcity, ^t 
least in the occupied regions. Bicycle tires 'jshowed a 
curious ingenuity; suspenders got their stretch from the 
weave of the cloth; galoshes were rarely seen. Leather, 

64 



THOU SHALT NOT . . . FRATERNIZE 

on the other hand, seemed to be more plentiful than we 
had been led to believe, though it was high in price. The 
cobbler paid twenty -five marks a pound for his materials, 
and must have a leather-ticket to get them; real shoes 
that cost seven to eight marks before the war ran now as 
high as seventy. A tolerable suit of civiHan clothing, of 
which there was no scarcity in shop-windows, sold for 
three or four hundred marks, no more at our exchange 
than it would have cost on Broadway, though neither the 
material, color, nor make would have satisfied the fastidious 
Broadway stroller. After the military stores of field-gray 
cloth were released this became a favorite material, not 
merely for men's wear, but for women's cloaks and children's 
outer garments. Paper was decidedly cheaper than in 
France; the newspapers considerably larger. The thousand 
and one articles of every-day life showed no extraordinary 
scarcity nor anything like the prices of France, far less 
self-supporting than Germany in these matters. Nor was 
the miscalled "luxury tax" — never collected, of course, 
of Americans after the first few exemplary punishments — 
anything like as irksome as that decreed on the banks of the 
Seine. That the burden of government on the mass of the 
people was anything but light, however, was demonstrated 
by the testimony of a workman in our provost court that he 
earned an average of seventy -five marks a week and paid 
one hundred and twenty-five marks a month in taxes! 

An Ersatz story going the rounds in Coblenz shows to 
what straits matters had come, as well as disproving the 
frequent assertion that the German is always devoid of a 
sense of humor. A bondholder, well-to-do before the war, 
runs the yam, was too honest or too lacking in foresight to 
invest in something bringing war profits, with the result 
that along in the third year of hostilities he found himself 
approaching a p^iniless state. Having lost the habit of 
work, and being too old to acquire it again, he soon found 

65 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

himself in a sad predicament. What most irked his com- 
fort-loving soul, however, was the increasing Ersatz-ness 
of the food on which he was forced to subsist. The day- 
came when he could bear it no longer. He resolved to 
commit suicide. Entering a drug-store, he demanded an 
absurdly large dose of prussic acid — and paid what under 
other conditions would have been a heartbreaking price 
for it. In the dingy little single room to which fortune 
had reduced him he wrote a letter of farewell to the world, 
swallowed the entire prescription, and lay down to die. 
For some time nothing happened. He had always been 
under the impression that prussic acid did its work quickly. 
Possibly he had been misinformed. He could wait. He 
lighted an Ersatz cigarette and settled down to do so. Still 
nothing befell him. He stretched out on his sagging bed 
with the patience of despair, fell asleep, and woke up late 
next morning feeling none the worse for his action. 

"Look here," he cried, bursting in upon the druggist, 
"what sort of merchant are you? I paid you a fabulous 
price for a large dose of prussic acid — I am tired of life and 
want to die — and the stuff has not done me the least harm ! " 

"Donner und Blitzen!'' gasped the apothecary. "Why 
didn't you say so? I would have warned you that you 
were probably wasting your money. You know every- 
thing in the shop now is Ersatz, and I have no way of know- 
ing whether Ersatz prussic acid, or any other poison I have 
in stock, has any such effect on the human system as does 
the real article." 

The purchaser left with angry words, slamming the door 
behind him until the Ersatz plate-glass in it crinkled from 
the impact. He marched into a shop opposite and bought 
a rope, returned to his room, and hanged himself. But 
at his first spasm the rope broke. He cast the remnants 
from him and stormed back into the rope-shop. 

"You call yourself an honest German," he screamed, 

66 



THOU SHALT NOT . . . FRATERNIZE 

"yet you sell me, at a rascally price, a cord that breaks 
under a niggardly strain of sixty kilos ! I am tired of life. 
I wanted to hang myself. I . . ." 

"My poor fellow," said the merchant, soothingly, "you 
should have known that all our rope is Ersatz now — made 
of paper . . ." 

"Things have come to a pretty pass," mumbled the victim 
of circumstances as he wandered aimlessly on up the street. 
"A man can no longer even put himself out of his misery. 
I suppose there is nothing left for me but to continue to 
live. Ersatz and all." 

He shuffled on until the gnawing of hunger became well- 
nigh unendurable, turned a comer, and ran into a long 
line of emaciated fellow-citizens before a municipal soup- 
kitchen. Falling in at the end of it, he worked his way 
forward, paid an Ersatz coin for a bowl of Ersatz stew, 
returned to his lodging — and died in twenty minutes. 

6 



IV 

KNOCKING ABOUT THE OCCUPIED AREA 

IF I have spoken chiefly of Coblenz in attempting to picture 
the American army in Germany, it is merely because 
things centered there. My assignment carried me every- 
where within our occupied area, and several times through 
those of our allies. The most vivid imagination could 
not have pictured any such Germany as this when I tramped 
her roads fifteen, twelve, and ten years before. The native 
population, dense as it is, was everywhere inundated by 
American khaki. The roads were rivers of Yankee soldiers, 
of trucks and automobiles, from the princely limousines of 
field-oflicers and generals to the plebeian Ford or side-car 
of mere lieutenants, often with their challenging insignia — 
an ax through a Boche helmet, and the like — still painted 
on their sides. The towns and villages had turned from 
field gray to olive drab. Remember we had nine divisions 
in our area, and an American division in column covers 
nearly forty miles. American guards with fixed bayonets 
patrolled the highways in pairs, like the carabinieri of Italy 
and the guardias civiles of Spain — though they were often 
the only armed men one met all day long, unless one counts 
the platoons, companies, or battalions still diligently drilling 
under the leafless apple-trees. We made our own speed 
rules, and though civilians may have ground their teeth with 
rage as we tore by in a cloud of dust or a shower of mud, 
outwardly they chiefly ignored our presence — except the 

68 



KNOCKING ABOUT THE OCCUPIED AREA 

girls, the poor, and the children, who more often waved 
friendly greetings. Of children there were many every- 
where, mobs of them compared with France — chubby, red- 
cheeked little boys, often in cut-down uniforms, nearly 
always wearing the red-banded, German fatigue bonnet, 
far less artistic, even in color, than the bonnet de police of 
French boys, and accentuating the round, close-cropped 
skulls that have won the nation the sobriquet of "square- 
head." The plump, hearty, straw-blond little girls were 
almost as numerous as their brothers; every town surged 
with them; if one of our favorite army correspondents 
had not already copyrighted the expression, I should say 
that the villages resembled nothing so much as human 
hives out of which children poured like disturbed bees. 
Every little way along the road a small boy thrust out a 
spiked helmet or a "Gott mil Uns" belt-buckle for sale as 
we raced past. The children not only were on very friendly 
terms with our soldiers — all children are — but they got on 
well even where the horizon blue of the poilu took the place 
of our khaki. 

Farmers were back at work in their fields now, most of 
them still in the field gray of the trenches, turned into 
"civics" by some simple little change. Men of military 
age seemed far more plentiful than along French roads. 
How clean and unscathed, untouched by the war, it all 
looked in contrast to poor, mutilated, devastated France. 
Many sturdy draft-horses were still seen, escaped by some 
miracle from the maw of war. Goodly dumps of American 
and French shells, for quick use should the Germans sud- 
denly cease to cry "Kamerad!" flashed by. In one spot 
was an enormous heap of Boche munitions waiting for our 
ordnance section to find some safe means of blowing it up. 
There were "Big Bertha" shells, and ZeppeHn bombs among 
them, of particular interest to those of us who had never 
seen them before, but who knew only too well how it feels 

69 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

to have them drop within a few yards of us. Every little 
while we sped past peasant men and women who were 
opening long straw- and earth-covered mounds, built last 
autumn under other conditions, and loading wagons with 
the huge coarse species of turnip — rutabagas, I believe 
we call them — which seemed to form their chief crop and 
food. In the big beech forest about the beautiful Larchersee 
women and children, and a few men, were picking up 
beechnuts under the sepia-brown carpet of last year's 
leaves. Their vegetable fat makes a good Ersatz butter. 
Wild ducks still winged their way over the See, or rode its 
choppy waves, undisturbed by the rumors of food scarcity. 
For not only did the game restrictions of the old r6gime 
still hold; the population was forced to hand over even 
its shotguns when we came, and to get one back again was a 
long and properly complicated process. 

The Americans took upon themselves the repair and 
widening of the roads which our heavy trucks had begim to 
pound into a condition resembling those of France in the 
war zone — at German expense in the end, of course; that 
was particularly where the shoe pinched. It broke the 
thrifty Boche's heart to see these extravagant warriors 
from overseas, to whom two years of financial carte blanche 
had made money seem mere paper, squandering his wealth, 
or that of his children, without so much as an if you please. 
The labor was German, under the supervision of American 
sergeants, and the recruiting of it absurdly simple — to the 
Americans. An order to the burgomaster informing him 
succinctly, "You will furnish four hundred men at such a 
place to-morrow morning at seven for road labor; wages 
eight marks a day," covered our side of the transaction. 
Where and how the burgomaster found the laborers was no 
soup out of our plates. We often got, of course, the poorest 
workmen; men too young or too old for our purposes, men 
either already broken on the wheel of industry or not yet 

70 




BARGES OF AMERICAN FOOD-STUFFS ON THEIR WAY UP THE RHINE 




BRITISH TOMMIES STOWING THEMSELVES AWAY FOR THE NIGHT ON fARGES 
ANCHORED NEAR THE HOLLAND FRONTIER 



KNOCKING ABOUT THE OCCUPIED AREA 

broken to harness; but there was an easy "come-back" 
if the German officials played that game too frequently. 
Once enrolled to labor for the American army, a man was 
virtually enlisted for the duration of the armistice — save for 
suitable reasons or lack of work. Strikes, so epidemic 
"over in Germany," were not permitted in our undertakings. 
A keen young lieutenant of engineers was in charge of road 
repairs and sawmills in a certain divisional area. One 
morning his sergeant at one of the mills called him on the 
Signal Corps telephone that linked all the Army of Occupa- 
tion together, with the information that the night force 
had struck. 

"Struck!" cried the lieutenant, aghast at the audacity. 
"I'll be out at once!" 

Arrived at the town m question, he dropped in on the 
A. P. M. to request that a squad of M. P.'s follow him 
without delay, and hurried on to the mill, fingering his .44. 

"Order that night force to fall in here at once!" he com- 
manded, indicating an imaginary line along which the 
offending company should be dressed. 

"Yes, sir," saluted the sergeant, and disappeared into 
the building. 

The lieutenant waited, nursing his rage. A small boy, 
blue with cold, edged forward to see what was going on. 
Two others, a bit older, thin and spindle-shanked, their 
throats and chins muffled in soiled and ragged scarfs, their 
gray faces testifying to long malnutrition, idled into view 
with that yellow-dog curiosity of hookworm victims. But 
the night force gave no evidence of existence. At length 
the sergeant reappeared. 

' ' Well, ' ' snapped the Heutenant , * ' what about it ? Where 
is that night shift?" 

"All present, sir," replied the sergeant, pointing at the 
three shivering urchins. ' ' Last night at midnight I ordered 
them to start a new pile of lumber, and the next I see of them 

71 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

they was crouching around the boiler — it was a cold night, 
sir — and when I ordered them back to work they said they 
hadn't had anything to eat for two days but some war- 
bread. You know there's been some hold-up in the pay 
vouchers ..." 

A small banquet at the neighboring Gasthof ended that 
particular strike without the intervention of armed force, 
though there were occasionally others that called for the 
shadow of it. 

In taking over industries of this sort the Americans 
adopted the practice of demanding to see the receipted 
bills signed by the German military authorities, then 
required the same prices. Orders were issued to supply 
no civilian trade without written permission from the 
Americans. After the first inevitable punishments for not 
taking the soft-spoken new-comers at their word, the pro- 
prietors applied the rule with a literalness that was typically 
German. A humble old woman knocked timidly at the 
lieutenant's ofHce door one day, and upon being admitted 
handed the clerk a long, impressive legal paper. When it 
had been deciphered it proved to be a laboriously penned 
request for permission to buy lumber at the neighboring 
sawmill. In it Frau Schmidt, there present, certified that 
she had taken over a vacant shop for the purpose of open- 
ing a shoe-store, that said occupation was legal and of use 
to the community, that there was a hole in the floor of 
said shop which it was to the advantage of the health and 
safety of the community to have mended, wherefore she 
respectfully prayed the Herr Leutnant in charge of the 
sawmills of the region to authorize her to buy three boards 
four inches wide and three feet long. In witness of the 
truth of the above assertions of Frau Schmidt, respectable 
and duly authorized member of the community, the burgo- 
master had this day signed his name and caused his seal to 
be affixed. 

72 



KNOCKING ABOUT THE OCCUPIED AREA 

The lieutenant solemnly approved the petition and passed 
it on "through military channels" to the sergeant at the 
sawmill. Any tendency of das Volk to take our occupancy 
with fitting seriousness was too valuable to be jeopardized 
by typical American informality. 

A few days later came another episode to disprove any 
rumors that the American heel was being applied with 
undue harshness. The village undertaker came in to state 
that a man living on the edge of town was expected to die, 
and that he had no lumber with which to make him a coffin. 
The tender-hearted lieutenant, who had seen many com- 
rades done to death in tricky ambuscades on the western 
front, issued orders that the undertaker be permitted to 
purchase materials for a half-dozen caskets, and as the peti- 
tioner bowed his guttural thanks he assured him: "You are 
entirely welcome. Whenever you need any more lumber 
for a similar purpose do not hesitate to call on me. I hope 
you will come early and often." 

The Boche gazed at the speaker with the glass-eyed 
expressionlessness peculiar to his race, bowed his thanks 
again, and departed. Whether or not he "got the idea" 
is not certain. My latest letter from the lieutenant con- 
tains the postscript, "I also had the satisfaction of granting 
another request for lumber for six coffins." 

They were singing a familiar old song with new words 
during my last weeks in Coblenz, the chorus beginning 
"The Rhine, the Rhine, the Yankee Rhine." For many 
miles up and down the historic stream it seemed so in- 
deed. I have been in many foreign ports in my day, and 
in none of them have I seen the American flag so much 
in evidence as at the junction of the Moselle and "Father 
Rhine." The excursion steamers — those same side- 
wheelers on which you rode that summer you turned 
tourist, on which you ate red cabbage at a table 
hemmed in by paunchy, gross Germans who rolled their 

73 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

sentimental eyes as the famous cliff roused in them a 
lusty attempt to sing of the Lorelei with her golden 
hair — carried the Stars and Stripes at their stem now. 
They were still manned by their German crews; a 
resplendent "square-head" officer still majestically paced 
the bridge. But they were in command of American 
Marines, "snappy," keen-eyed young fellows who had 
fought their way overland — how fiercely the Boche himself 
knows only too well — till they came to water again, like the 
amphibians that they are. A "leatherneck" at the wheel, 
a khaki-clad band playing airs the Rhine cliffs never echoed 
back in former years, a compact mass of happy Yanks 
packing every corner, they plow placidly up and down the 
stream which so many of their passengers never dreamed 
of seeing outside their school-books, dipping their flags 
to one another as they pass, a rubber-lunged "Y" man 
pouring out megaphoned tales and legends as each "castled 
crag," flying the Stars and Stripes or the Tricolor now, 
loomed into view, rarely if ever forgetting to add that 
unsuspected Httle touch of "propaganda," "Burned by 
the French in 1689." Baedeker himself never aspired 
to see his land so crowded with tourists and sightseers as it 
was in the spring of 19 19. Now and then a shipload of 
those poilus who waved to us from the shore as we danced 
and sang and megaphoned our way up through their terri- 
tory came down past Coblenz, their massed horizon blue 
so much more tangible than our drab brown, their band 
playing quite other tunes than ours, the doughboys ashore 
shrilling an occasional greeting to what they half affection- 
ately, half disdainfully call "the poor Frogs." There was 
a somewhat different atmosphere aboard these horizon-blue 
excursion boats than on our own; they seemed to get so 
much more satisfaction, a contentment almost too deep for 
words, out of the sight of the sale Boche in manacles. 

Boatloads of "Tommies" came up to look us over now 

74 



KNOCKING ABOUT THE OCCUPIED AREA 

and then, too, a bit disdainful, as is their nature, but friendly, 
in their stiff way, for all that, their columns of caps punctu- 
ated here and there by the cocked hat of the saucy " Aussies " 
and the red-banded head-gear of those other un-British 
Britons from the antipodes who look at first glance so 
startlingly like our own M. P.'s. Once we were even favored 
with a call by the sea-dogs whose vigil made this new 
Watch on the Rhine possible; five "snappy" little sub- 
marine-chasers, that had wormed their way up through 
the canals and rivers of France, anchored down beneath 
the gigantic monument at the mouth of the Moselle. You 
have three guesses as to whether or not the Germans looked 
at them with interest. 

It was my good fortune to be able to make two excursions 
into tmoccupied Germany while stationed on the Rhine. 
Those who fancy the sight of an American uniform beyond 
our Unes was like shaking a red tablecloth in a Spanish 
bull-ring may be surprised to know that these little jaunts 
were by no means rare. We went not merely in full uni- 
form, quite without camouflage, but in army automobiles 
and wholly unarmed — and we came back in a condition 
which a cockney would pronounce in the same way. The 
first spin was to Dusseldorf, between two of her Sparticist 
flurries. Not far above Bonn the landscape changed sud- 
denly from American to British khaki, with a boundary post 
in charge of a circumspect English sergeant between. Be- 
low Cologne, with her swarming "Tommies" and her plump 
and comely girl street-car conductors and "motormen" 
in their green-banded Boche caps, we passed scores of the 
apple-cheeked boy recruits England was sending us to take 
the place of those who were "fed up with it," and who 
gazed about them with that wide-eyed interest in every little 
detail of this strange new land which the traveler would 
fain keep to the end of his days. It seemed natural to find 
the British here ; one had grown to associate them with the 

75 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

flat, low portions of the country. Far down the river a 
French post stopped us, but the sentry was so interested 
in posing before my kodak that he forgot to mention passes, 
and we were soon speeding on through a narrow horizon- 
blue belt. The Belgians, who turned the scene to brown 
again not far beyond, were even less exacting than the 
poilus. At the farther end of the great bridge over the 
Rhine between Neuss and Dusseldorf they had a score of 
sentries posted behind barbed-wire entanglements, touch- 
ing the very edge of the unoccupied city. But our only 
formality in passing them was to shout over our shoulders, 
"Armie americaine!" that open sesame of western Europe 
for nearly two years. 

Somewhat to our disappointment the atmosphere of 
Dusseldorf was very little different from that of an occupied 
city. The ubiquitous small boy surrounded us more densely 
wherever our car halted; the thronged streets stared at us 
somewhat more searchingly, but there was little other 
change in attitude to be noted. Those we asked for direc- 
tions gave us the same elaborate courtesy and annoying 
assistance; the shops we entered served us as alertly 
and at as reasonable prices; the manufacturer we called on 
listened to our wants as respectfully as any of his fellows 
in the occupied zone — and was quite as willing to open a 
credit with the American army. The motto everywhere 
seemed to be "Business as usual." There was next to 
nothing to suggest a state of war or siege anywhere within 
a thousand miles of us — nothing, at least, except a few 
gaunt youths of the '19 class who guarded railway viaducts 
and government buildings, still wearing their full trench 
equipment, including — strange to believe! — their camou- 
flaged iron hats ! Postal clerks of the S. O. S. supposed, of 
course, that all this brand of head-gear had long since crossed 
the Atlantic. Humanity certainly is quick to recuperate. 
Here, on the edge of the greatest war in history, with the 

76 



KNOCKING ABOUT THE OCCUPIED AREA 

victorious enemy at the very end of the next street, with red 
revolution hovering in the air, Hfe went on its even v/ay; 
merchants sold their wares; street-cars carried their lolling 
passengers; children homeward bound from school with 
their books in the hairy cowhide knapsacks we had so often 
seen doing other service at the front chattered and laughed 
and played their wayside games. 

The return to Coblenz was even more informal than the 
down-stream trip. Belgian, French, and British guards 
waved to us to pass as we approached; only our own frontier 
guard halted us, and from then on our right arms grew 
weary with returning the salutes that were snapped at us in 
constant, unfailing succession. 

The second trip was a trifle more exciting, partly because 
we had no permission to carry it as far as we did — playing 
hooky, which in the army is pronounced "A. W. O. L." 
keeps its zest all through life — partly because we never 
knew at what moment the war-battered "Dodge" would 
fall to bits beneath us, like the old one-horse shay, and leave 
us to struggle back to our billets as best we could. It was 
a cold but pleasant Sunday. Up the Rhine to Mainz 
nothing broke the rhythm of our still robust motor except 
the M. P. at the old stone arch that separated the American 
from the broad horizon-blue strip — the two journeys laid 
end to end made one realize what an enormous chunk of 
Germany the armistice gave the Allies. We halted, of 
course, at the cathedral of the French headquarters to see 
the "Grablegung Christi (1492)," as every one should, 
listened awhile to the whine of the pessimistic old sexton 
with his, "Oh, such another war will come again in twenty 
years or so; humanity is like that," and sped on along a 
splendid highway to Wiesbaden. The French were making 
the most of their stay in this garden spot. They let no 
non-fraternizing orders interfere with enjoying the best 
the Kurhaus restaurant or cellars, the magnificent, over- 

77 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

ornate opera-house, the beautiful park, even the culture of 
the better class of German visitors, afforded. 

Our pass read Wiesbaden and return, but that would 
have made a tame day of it. Rejuvenated of heart, if 
saddened of pocketbook, by the Kurhaus luncheon, we rat- 
tled swiftly on to the eastward. In due time we began to 
pass French outposts, indifferent to our passage at first, 
then growing more and more inquisitive, until there came 
one which would not be put off with a flip of the hand and a 
shouted "Arrn^e am^ricaine'' but brought us to an abrupt 
stop with a long, slim bayonet that came perilously near 
disrupting the even purr of our still sturdy motor. The 
crucial moment had come. If the French guard could read 
our pass we were due to turn back forthwith, chagrined and 
crestfallen. But none of us had ever heard of a French 
guard who could read an American pass, and we presented 
it with that lofty assurance which only those have not 
learned who wantonly wasted their time with the A. E. F. 
in France. The sentry received the pass dubiously, as 
we expected him to; he looked it over on both sides with an 
inwardly puzzled but an outwardly wise air, as we knew he 
would; he called his corporal, as we had foreseen; the cor- 
poral looked at the pass with the pretended wisdom of all 
his kind, handed it back with a courteous "Bien, messieurs,** 
as we were certain he would, and we sped on "into Germany." 

It was a bland and sunny afternoon. The suburban 
villages of Frankfurt were waddling about in their Sunday 
best, the city itself was promenading its less dowdy holiday 
attire along the wide, well-swept streets. We brought up 
at a square overlooked by a superbly proportioned bronze 
gentleman who had lost every stitch of his attire except 
his "tin hat," where we left the car and mingled with 
the throng. Passers-by directed us courteously enough to 
the "Goethehaus." Its door-bell handle dangled loosely, 
as it had fifteen years before, but a sign informed us that the 

78 




A BALL-GAME OR A BOXING-MATCH WITHIN THE BARBED-WIRE INCLOSURE 
OF THE AMERICAN CAMP AT ROTTERDAM WAS SURE TO ATTRACT THE CHIEF 

SUNDAY AUDIENCE 




A CORNER OF ROTTERDAM 



KNOCKING ABOUT THE OCCUPIED AREA 

place was closed on Sunday afternoons. The scattered 
crowd that had paused to gaze at our strange uniforms 
told us to come next day, or any other time than Sunday 
afternoon, and we should be admitted at once. We did 
not take the trouble to explain how difficult it would be for 
us to come another day. Instead, we strolled nonchalantly 
through the thickening throng and fell in with the stream of 
promenaders along the wide main street. There were four 
of us — Colonel — but never mind the name, for this one 
happened to be a perfectly good colonel, and he may still 
be in the army — and three other officers. We — or, more 
exactly, our uniforms — attracted a decided attention. 
The majority stared at us vacantly or with puzzled airs; 
now and then we saw some man of military age whisper 
our identity to his companion. No one gave any indica- 
tion of a desire to molest us. Yet somehow the atmosphere 
about us was considerably more tense than in Diisseldorf, 
Twice we heard a '^verdammte'^ behind us, but as one of them 
was followed by the word "Engldnder" it may have been 
nothing worse than a case of mistaken identity. Still 
there was something in the air that whispered we had 
best not prolong our call beyond the dictates of good taste. 

The shop-windows were fully as well stocked as those of 
Cologne or Coblenz; the strollers, on the whole, well dressed. 
Their faces, in the expert opinion of the colonel, showed 
no more signs of malnutrition than the average crowd 
of any large city. Here and there we passed a sturdy, 
stern-faced sailor, a heavy Browning or Luger at his side, 
reminding us that these men of the sea — or of the Kiel 
Canal — had taken over the police duties in many centers. 
Otherwise nothing met the eye or ear that one would not 
have seen in Frankfurt in days of peace. 

As we were retracing our steps, one of my companions 
stepped across the street to ask directions to a fashionable 
afternoon-tea house. He returned a moment later beside 

79 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

a gigantic, heavily armed soldier-policeman. The fellow 
had demanded to see our passes, our permission to visit 
Frankfurt. Now, in the words of the American soldier, 
we had no more permission to visit Frankfurt "than a 
rabbit." But this was the last place in the world to betray 
that fact. The pass to Wiesbaden and return I had left 
in the car. I showed great eagerness to take the policeman 
to see it. He gave evidence of a willingness to accept the 
invitation. We were on the point of starting when a more 
dapper young soldier-guard, a sergeant, appeared. The 
giant clicked his heels sharply and fell into the background. 
The sergeant spoke perfect English, with a strong British 
accent. He regretted the annoyance of troubling us, but — 
had we a pass? I showed renewed eagerness to conduct 
him to the car and show it. 

"Not at all. Not at all," he apologized. "As long as 
you have a pass it's quite all right, you know, quite. Ah, 
and you have an automobile? Yes, yes, quite, the square 
where the bronze Hermes is. It's quite all right, I assure 
you. You will pardon us for troubling you? The Astoria? 
Ah, it is rather a jaunt, you know. But here is the Cafe 
Bauer, right in front of you. You'll find their cakes quite 
as good, and, their music is topping, you know. Not at all. 
Not at all. It's quite all right, really. So sorry to have 
troubled you, you know. Good day, sir." 

It was with difficulty that we found seats in the crowded 
cafe, large as it was. A throng of men and women, some- 
what less buoyant than similar gatherings in Paris, was 
sipping beer and wine at the marble-topped tables. A 
large orchestra played rather well in a corner. Seidels of 
good beer cost us less than they would have in New York 
two years before. The bourgeois gathering looked at 
us rather fixedly, a bit languidly. I started to light a 
cigar, but could not find my matches. A well-dressed man 
of middle age at the next table leaned over and lighted it 

80 



KNOCKING ABOUT THE OCCUPIED AREA 

for me. Two youthful students in their gay-colored caps 
grinned at us rather flippantly. A waiter hovered about 
us, bowing low and smirking a bit fatuously whenever we 
spoke to him. There was no outward evidence to show 
that we were among enemies. Still there was no wisdom 
in playing too long with fire, once the initial pleasure of 
the game had worn off. It would have been hard to explain 
to our own people how we came to be in Frankfurt, even 
if nothing worse came of another demand for our passes. 
Uncle Sam would never suffer for the loss of that "Dodge," 
but he would be quite apt to show extensive inquisitiveness 
to know who lost it. The late afternoon promenade at the 
Kurhaus back in Wiesbaden was said to be very interesting. 
We paid our reckoning, tipped our tip, and wandered 
casually back to the square graced by the bronze young man 
whose equipment had gone astray. To say that we were 
surprised to find the car waiting where we had left it, the 
doughboy-chauffeur dozing in his seat, would be putting 
it too strongly. But we were relieved. 

The Kurhaus promenade was not what it was "cracked up 
to be," at least not that afternoon. But we may have been 
somewhat late. The opera, beginning at six, was excellent, 
lacking something of the lightness of the same performance 
in Paris, but outdoing it in some details, chiefly in its 
mechanical effects. One looked in vain for any suggestion 
of under-nourishment in the throng of buxom, "corn-fed" 
women and stodgy men who crowded the house and the 
top-heavily decorated foyer during the entr'actes. French- 
men in uniform, from generals to poilus, gave color to the 
rather somber audience and made no bones of "fraterniz- 
ing" with the civilians — particularly if she chanced to be 
beautiful, which was seldom the case. American officers 
were numerous; there were Englishmen, "Anzacs," Bel- 
gians, Italians, and a Serb or two. The after-theater 
dinner at the Kurhaus was sumptuous, except in one detail; 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

neither bribery nor pleading could win us the tiniest slice 
of the black war-bread that was stintingly served to those 
with bread-tickets. Otherwise "wine, women, and song" 
were as much in evidence as if war had never come to trouble 
the worldly pleasures of Wiesbaden. 

We left after ten, of a black night. Our return trip, by 
direct route, took us through a strip of neutral territory. 
We were startled some eight or ten times by a stentorian 
"Halte!" at improvised wooden barriers, in lonely places, 
by soldiers in French uniforms who were not Frenchmen, 
and who could neither speak any tongue we could muster 
nor read our pass. They were French colonials, many 
of them blacker than the night in which they kept their 
shivering vigil. Most of them delayed us a matter of 
several minutes; all of them carried aside their clumsy 
barriers and let us pass at last with bad grace. Nearing 
Coblenz, we were halted twice by our own soldiers, stationed 
in pairs beside their blazing fires, and at three in the morning 
we scattered to our billets. 

Two cartoons always come to mind when I look back on 
those months with the American Watch on the Rhine. 
One is French. It shows two ^ai/ws sitting on the bank of 
the famous stream, the one languidly fishing, with that 
placid indifference of the French fisherman as to whether 
or not he ever catches anything; the other stretched at 
three-fourths length against a wall and yawning with 
ennui as he remarks, "And they call this the Army of 
Occupation!'' The other drawing is American. It shows 
Pershing in 1950. He is bald, with a snowy beard reaching 
to his still soldierly waist, while on his lap he holds a grand- 
son to whom he has been telling stories of his great years. 
Suddenly, as the erstwhile commander of the A. E. F. is 
about to doze off into his afternoon nap, the grandson points 
a finger at the map, demanding, "And what is that red spot 
in the center of Europe, grandpa?" With one brief glance 

82 




COACHMEN WAITING FOR FARES AT A BERLIN RAILWAY STATION 




AN AMERICAN ARMY AUTOMOBILE BEFORE THE ADLON ON UNTER DEN LINDEN 



.. A* i'^' '^^ 



KNOCKING ABOUT THE OCCUPIED AREA 

the old general springs to his feet, crying, "Great Caesar! 
I forgot to relieve the Army of Occupation!" 

Those two squibs are more than mere jokes; they sum up 
the point of view of the soldiers on the Rhine. The French, 
and like them the British and Belgians, only too glad that 
the struggle that had worn into their very souls was ended 
at last, had settled down to all the comfort and leisure 
consistent with doing their full duty as guardians of the 
strip intrusted to them. The Americans, like a team arriv- 
ing at a baseball tournament so late that they could play 
only the last three innings, had gone out on the field to 
bat up flies and play a practice game to take some of the 
sting out of the disappointment of finding the contest over 
before they could make better use of their long and arduous 
training. It was this species of military oakum-picking 
that was the second grievance of the American soldier on the 
Rhine; the first was the uncertainty that surrounded his 
return to the land of his birth. While the neighboring 
armies were walking the necessary posts and sleeping many 
and long naps, our soldiers had scarcely found time to wash 
the feet that had carried them from the trenches to the 
Rhine, much less cure them of their blisters, when orders 
swept over the Army of Occupation calling for long hours 
of intensive training six days a week. It is said that an 
English general on an inspection tour of our area watched 
this mile after mile of frenzied trench-digging, of fake 
bombing - parties, of sham battles the barrages of which 
still made the earth tremble for a hundred miles around, 
of never-ending "Squads east and squads west," without a 
word, until he came to the end of the day and of his review. 
Then he remarked: 

"Astounding! Extraordinary, all this, upon my word! 
You chaps certainly have the vim of youth. But . . . ah . . . 
er . . . if you don't mind telling me, just what are you 
planning to do? Fight your way back through France?" 
7 83 



V 

GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

HTHERE is an aged saying to the effect that the longest 
"»• way round is often the shortest way home. It applies 
to many of the crossroads of life. Toward the end of March 
I found myself facing such a fork in my own particular 
footpath. My "duties" with the Army of Occupation 
had slowed down to a point where I could only write the 
word between quotation-marks and speak it with a throaty 
laugh. I suggested that I be sent on a walking trip through 
unoccupied Germany, whence our information was not so 
meager as contradictory. It would have been so simple 
to have dropped into the inconspicuous garb of a civilian 
right there in Coblenz, and to have slipped noiselessly 
over the outer arc of our bridgehead. Eventually, I believe, 
the army would have adopted the suggestion. There were 
times when it showed an almost human interest in the proj- 
ect. But I am of an intensely selfish, self-centered dis- 
position; I wanted to try the adventure myself , personally. 
Besides, there was no certainty that my grandson would 
care for that species of sport. He might be of quite the 
opposite temperament — a solid, respectable, church-going, 
respected citizen, and all that sort of thing, you know. 
Furthermore, I had not yet taken the first preliminary, 
indispensable step toward acquiring a grandson. Where- 
fore, in a lucid moment, I recalled the moth-eaten adage 
above plagiarized, and concluded that the easiest way 



GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

to get "over into Germany" was to turn my back on the 
Rhine and return to France. 

It may be that my offer to relieve Uncle Sam from the 
burden of my support caught the authorities napping. 
At any rate, the application sailed serenely over the reef 
on which I fully expected to see it hopelessly shipwrecked, 
and a week later I was speeding toward that village in cen- 
tral France known to the A. E. F. as the "canning factory." 

Relieved for the first time in twenty-three months of 
the necessity of awaiting authority for my goings and com- 
ings, I returned a fortnight later to Coblenz. It would 
not have been difficult to sneak directly over our line 
into unoccupied territory. I knew more than one forest- 
hidden loophole in it. But that would scarcely have been 
fair to my erstwhile colonel — and with all his faults the 
colonel had been rather decent. Besides, while that would 
have been the more romantic thing, it might not have led 
to as long and unhampered a stay in Germany as a more 
orderly and gentlemanly entrance. 

Of the two neutralizing points, that to the north was re- 
puted the more promising. The express to Cologne sped 
across white fields that belied the calendar and gave the 
heavily blossomed cherry- and apple-trees the appearance 
of being laden with clinging snow. The more brassy 
British khaki took the place of our own, the compartment 
groups changed gradually from American to English officers. 
The latter were very young, for the most part, and one 
scarcely needed to listen to their almost childish prattle 
of their work and things warlike to know that they were 
not veterans. Long freight-trains crowded with still 
younger Britishers, exuding the extreme callowness of the 
untraveled insular youth, rattled into town with us from a 
more northern direction, happy to take the place of the 
grim and grizzled warriors that were being demobilized. 
In the outskirts of the city Germans of both sexes and all 

85 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

ages were placidly yet diligently toiling in their little garden 
patches into the twilight of the long spring day. 

The British, rating me a correspondent, billeted me in a 
once proud hotel in the shadow of the great cathedral. 
In the scurry of pursuing passport and visees in Paris I 
had found no time to change my garb to the kind that 
flaps about the ankles. In consequence my evening stroll 
was several times broken by as many of England's boyish 
new guardsmen, their bayonets overtopping them by 
several inches in some cases, who pounded their rifle- 
butts on the pavement in salute and stage-whispered a bit 
tremulously : 

"Officers is not to walk about too much by theirselves, 
sir." 

My query at the first warning had been answered with a : 

"Three of them was badly cut up last night, sir." 

There were no outward signs of any such serious enmity, 

however; on the contrary, the populace seemed almost 

friendly, and at the officers' club guests were checking their 

side-arms with the German doorman. 

The tall and hearty Irish guardsman in charge of British 
Rhine traffic readily granted my request to go down the 
river in one of the daily steamers carrying troops back to 
"Blighty" for demobilization. That day's boat floundered 
under the simple little name of Ernst Ludwig Gross Herzog 
von Hessen und hei Rhein! I believe the new owners 
called it Louie. A score of German girls came down 
to the wharf to wave the departing "Tommies" farewell. 
All day we passed long strings of barges flying the triangular 
flag of the Food Commission, bearing supplies for the Army 
of Occupation and the civilian population of the occupied 
region. The time was but a few weeks off when the arteries 
of the Third Army flowing through France would be entirely 
cut off. The food on board the Louie was not unlike our 
own army ration; the bunks supplied the officers were of 

86 



GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

a sort that would have moved our own more exacting 
wearers of the "Sam Browne" to start a Congressional 
investigation. The most noticeable differences between this 
Blighty -bound multitude and our own doughboys were three 
in number — their lack of inventiveness in amusing them- 
selves, their lower attitude toward women, and the utter 
lack of care of the teeth, conspicuous even among the offi- 
cers. We should have been hard put to it, however, to 
fmd a higher type than the youthful captains and lieutenants 
in charge of the steamer. 

At five we halted for the night beside several huge barges 
anchored well out in the stream, their holds filled with very 
passable bunks — as soldiering goes. While the Tommies, 
pack-laden, clambered down the half-dozen narrow hatches 
to their light quarters, I dropped in on the families that 
dwelt in the stern of each. Those who have never paid a 
similar call might be surprised to find what homelike com- 
fort reigns in these floating residences. Outwardly the 
barges are of the plainest and roughest, coal-carriers for 
the most part, with all the smudge and discomfort of such 
occupation. As the lower house door at the rear opens, his 
eyes are prepared to behold something about as inviting 
as the forecastle of a windjammer. Instead they are all 
but dazzled by the immaculate, housewifely cleanliness, 
the orderly comfort of the interior. The Rhine-plying 
dwelling is a close replica of a "lower middle-class " residence 
ashore — a half-dozen rooms, carpeted, lace-curtained, the 
walls decorated with family portraits, elaborate-framed 
mottoes and over-colored statuettes of the Catholic faith, 
a great square bed of inviting furnishings in the parental 
room, smaller though no less attractive ones in the other 
sleeping-chambers, easy-chairs, the latest thing in kitchen 
ranges, large lamps that are veritable chandeliers suspended 
from the ceiling — nothing was missing, down to the family 
cat and canary. 

87 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

It was noticeable that though the barges had been com- 
mandeered by their army and they never lost sight of the 
fact that their owners were "the enemy," the English 
officers were meticulously courteous in requesting permis- 
sion to enter the family cabins. Your Britisher never for- 
gets that a man's home is his castle. One could not but 
wonder just what the attitude of a German officer would 
have been under reversed conditions, for the same motto 
is far less deeply ingrained in the Teuton character. The 
barge nearest the steamer was occupied by a family with 
five children, the oldest aged fourteen, all bom on board, 
at as many points of the vessel's constant going and coming 
between Rotterdam and Mannheim. Two of them were at 
school in the town in which the family was registered as 
residents, where the parental marriage was on record, 
where the father reported when the order of mobilization 
called him to arms. The oldest had already been entered as 
"crew," and was preparing to follow in his father's foot- 
steps — ^if the expression be allowed under the circumstances. 

When they had arranged themselves for the night, the 
"Tommies" returned on board the steamer for a two-hour 
entertainment of such caliber as could be aroused from their 
own midst. There were several professional barn-storming 
vaudeville performers among them, rather out of practice 
from their long trench vigils, but willing enough to offer 
such talents as they still possessed. Nor were the amateurs 
selfish in preserving their incognito. It was simple fare, 
typified by such uproarious jokes as : 

"'Ungry, are you? Well, 'ere, 'ere's a piece of chalk. 
Go draw yourself a plate of 'am an' eggs." 

But it all served to pass the endless last hours that 
separated the war-weary veterans from the final ardently 
awaited return to "the old woman an' the kids." 

The tramp of hundreds of hobnailed shoes on the deck 
over our heads awoke us at dawn, and by the time we had 



GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

reached the open air Germany had been left behind. It 
needed only the glimpse of a cart, drawn by a dog, occupied 
by a man, and with a horse hitched behind — a genuine case 
of the cart before the horse — trotting along an elevated 
highway, sharp-cut against the floor-flat horizon, to tell 
us we were in Holland. Besides, there were stodgy wind- 
mills slowly laboring on every hand, to say nothing of the 
rather unprepossessing young Dutch lieutenant, in his 
sickly gray-green uniform, who had boarded us at the 
frontier, to confirm the change of nationality of Father 
Rhine. The lieutenant's duties consisted of graciously 
accepting an occasional sip of the genuine old Scotch that 
graced the sideboard of the youthful commanding officer, 
and of seeing to it that the rifles of the Tommies remained 
under lock and key until they reached their sea-going vessel 
at the mouth of the river — a task that somehow suggested 
a Lilliputian sent to escort a regiment of giants through his 
diminutive kingdom. 

In the little cluster of officers on the upper deck the 
conversation rarely touched on war deeds, even casually, 
though one knew that many a thrilling tale was hidden 
away in their memories. The talk was all of rehabilitation, 
rebuilding of the civilian lives that the Great Adventure 
had in so many cases all but wholly wrecked. Among the 
men below there was more apathy, more silent dreaming, 
interspersed now and then by those crude witticisms with 
which their class breaks such mental tension : 

"These 'ere blinkin' Dutch girls always makes me think 
as 'ow their faces 'ave been mashed by a steam-roller an' 
their bloomin* legs blowed up with a bicycle pump, so 
'elp me!" 

The remark might easily be rated an exaggeration, but 
the solid Jongvrouws who clattered their wooden-shod way 
along the banks could not in all fairness have been called 
delicate. 

89 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

I was conscious of a flicker of surprise when the Dutch 
authorities welcomed me ashore without so much as open- 
ing my baggage — particularly as I was still in uniform. 
The hotel I chose turned out to be German in ownership 
and personnel. Steeped in the yarns of the past five years, 
I looked forward to at least the excitement of having spies 
go through my baggage the moment I left it unguarded. 
Possibly they did ; if so, they were superhumanly clever in 
repacking the stuff as they found it. 

If I had been so foolish as to suppose that I could hurry 
on at once into Germany I should have been sadly disap- 
pointed. The first of the several duties before me was to 
apply to the police for a Dutch identity card. Without it 
no one could exist at liberty in nor leave the flat little 
kingdom. As usually happens in such cases, when one is 
in a hurry, the next day was Sunday. The chief excitement 
in Rotterdam on the day of rest was no longer the Zoo, 
but the American camp, a barbed-wire inclosure out along 
the wharves about which the Dutchman and his wife and 
progeny packed a dozen rows deep to gaze at doughboys 
tossing baseballs or swinging boxing-gloves, with about 
as much evidence of the amusement as they might show 
before a Rembrandt or a Van Dyck painting. Naturally 
so hilarious a Sabbath passes swiftly for a man eager to be 
elsewhere ! 

There were, of course, the window displays of the closed 
shops, of unfailing interest to any one long famiHar only 
with warring lands. No wonder these placid Dutchmen 
looked so full-cheeked and contented. Though a trades- 
man may have found some things missing, to the casual 
eye there were apparently none of the material good things 
of life that could not be had in superabundance. Butter, 
eggs, cakes, bonbons, fat bacon, meat of every species, 
sweets of all kinds, soap as good and as cheap as before 
the war, cigarettes, cigars, and tobacco enough to have 

90 



GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

set all France to rioting, all those little dainties which the 
gormands of the belligerent countries had ceased even 
to sigh for, were here tantalizingly spread out for block 
after block, street after street. Restaurants ostentated 
menu -cards offering anything a hungry man could pay 
for; milk was to be had every few yards at ten Dutch 
cents a glass. One had something of the sensation that 
would come from seeing diamonds and gold nuggets strewn 
along the way just around the corner from the abode of a 
band of unsuccessful yeggmen. With the caution bred of 
nineteen months in France I had filled the interstices of 
my baggage with chocolate and cigars. It was like car- 
rying gloves to Grenoble. Nothing was more abundantly 
displayed in the windows of Rotterdam than those two 
articles. 

A closer inspection, however, showed that Holland had 
not entirely escaped the secondary effects of the war. The 
milk that still sold so cheaply showed a distinct evidence 
now of too close an alliance between the herd and the pump. 
If the restaurants were fully supplied from hors-d'oeuvre 
to coffee, the aftermath was a very serious shock to the 
financial system. There seemed, moreover, to be no place 
where the average rank and file of laboring humanity could 
get its wholesome fill for a reasonable portion of its income. 
The bonbons were a trifle pasty; the cigars not only as 
expensive as across the Atlantic — which means manyfold 
more than the old Dutch prices — they were far more invit- 
ing behind a plate-glass than when burning in front of the 
face. The clothing that was offered in such abundance 
usually confessed frankly to membership in the shoddy 
class. Suspenders and garters had all but lost their elas- 
ticity ; shoes — except the more popular Dutch variety — had 
soared to the lofty realms to which all articles of leather 
have ascended the world over. Bicycles, the Dutchman's 
chief means of locomotion, however, seemed as easily within 

91 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

reach as if the far-spread "rubber crisis" had never dis- 
covered this corner of Europe. 

Yet on the whole these happy, red - cheeked, overfed 
Dutchmen did not seem to have a care in the world. Their 
attitude toward the American uniform appeared to be cold, 
at best not above indifference, though the new doughboy- 
weekly credited them with genuine friendliness. One got 
the impression that they were pro-Ally or pro-Boche inter- 
changeably, as it served their own interests — which after 
all is quite in keeping with human nature the world roimd. 
The most serious task of the American detachment was to 
prevent the supplies destined for hungry Europe beyond 
from dwindling under the hands of the Dutch stevedores 
who transhipped them. It would, perhaps, be unfair to 
call the stodgy little nation a war profiteer, yet there were 
suggestions on all sides that it had not always scorned to 
take advantage of the distress of its neighbors. I may be 
prejudiced, but I did not find the Hollanders what the 
Spaniards calls simpdtico, not even so much as I had fifteen 
years before. If I may so express it, the kingdom left the 
same impression one feels upon meeting an old classmate 
who has amassed wealth in some of the quicker, less laborious 
methods our own land affords. One rejoices, in a way, 
at his prosperity, yet one feels more in tune with the less 
"successful" old-time friend who has been mellowed by 
his fair share of adversities. 

Monday, though it was the last day of April, shivered 
under a ragged blanket of wet snow. The line-up at the 
police station was international and it was long. Further- 
more, the lieutenants behind the extemporized wickets 
were genuinely Dutch; they neither gossiped nor loafed, 
yet they did not propose to let the haste of a disorderly 
outside world disturb their racial serenity or jar their 
superb penmanship. They preserved the same sense of 

order amid the chaos that surrounded their tight little 

92 



GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

land as the magnificent policemen directing traffic in the 
main streets outside, who halted the stranger inadvertently 
following the wrong sidewalk with a courteous but exceed- 
ingly firm "You are taking a valk on the rhight side of the 
street, pleasse." In the course of two hours I reached a 
wicket — only to find that I needed two photographs. By 
the time I had been mugged and reached the head of the 
international line again another day had drifted into the 
irredeemable past. 

It was not easy to get the Hollander to talk of the war 
and its kindred topics, even when one found him able 
to speak some better-known tongue than his own. He 
seemed to hold the subject in some such abhorrence as 
cultured persons do the latest scandal, or, more exactly, 
perhaps, to look upon it as a highly successful soap manu- 
facturer does the plebeian commodity on which his social 
superstructure is erected. Americans who had been in 
the country long enough to penetrate a bit below the surface 
were inclined to think that, if he had any other feeling 
than pro-Dutch, he leaned a little to the eastward. Es- 
pecially, however, was he interested in seeing to it that 
both sides were given an equal opportunity of eating undis- 
turbed at his table — and paying well for the privilege. 
In a mild way a clean and orderly hotelkeeper housing 
two rival football teams would have displayed the same 
attitude. 

But gibes at either side were not wholly tabooed. At an 
alleged "musical comedy" in a local theater the scene that 
produced the most audible mirth depicted the erstwhile 
Kaiser and Crown Prince — excellently mimed down to the 
crippled arm of the one and the goat-face of the other — 
enjoying the bucolic hospitality of their land of refuge. 
The father, dressed in one of the most gorgeous of his 
innumerable uniforms, stood at a convenient block, splitting 
kindling with a one-handed hatchet; the son, in wooden 

93 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

shoes and a Zuyder Zee cap, sat on a pierhead serenely 
fishing. Above their heads stood a road-sign pointing in 
opposite directions to: 

"PARIS— 45,000 kilometers; CALAIS— 75,000 kilo- 
meters." 

Their extended quarrel on who started the war, and why, 
brought no evidence of pro-German sympathy from the 
audience. It was easy to imagine the horrified protest 
from the German Legation which such a skit would have 
brought down upon the producer's head a year before. 
A scene that caused little less mirth showed a Dutch frontier 
guard so hoary with service that their clothing had sprouted 
toadstools and their feet barnacles. 

The more widely I inquired the more unlikely seemed the 
possibility of getting into Germany. This was in keeping 
with my experiences in other lands, had I stopped to think 
of it, where it had always proved simpler to dash forward 
on a difficult trip first and make inquiries afterward. Our 
consulate in Rotterdam had no suggestions to offer and 
advised me to see our Legation at The Hague. An excellent 
train, showing no evidence that the world had ever been at 
war, set me down at the Dutch capital an hour later. 

"You want to get into Germany?" queried the Legation, 
with elevated eyebrows. "Well, all we can say is God bless 
you!" 

A deeper probing, however, showed that this was only the 
official voice speaking. 

"Personally," continued the particular secretary to whom 
I had appealed, with a decided accent on the word, "I would 
suggest that you see the German Legation. Officially, of 
course, we do not know that any such place exists, but — I 
have heard — quite unofficially — that there is a Herr Maltzen 
there who. . . . But of course you could not call on him 
in American khaki. ..." 

I came near making the faux pas of asking where the Ger- 

94 



GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

man Legation was situated. Of course the secretary could 
not have known officially. The first passer-by outside, 
however, readily pointed it out to me — just around the 
comer. By the time I had returned to Rotterdam and 
outfitted myself in civilian garb carefully adjusted to pass 
muster at so exacting a function as a German official visit 
and at the same time not to suggest wealth to fellow-road- 
sters should I succeed in entering the Empire, another day 
had been added to my debit column. 

On the train to The Hague next morning I tested the 
disguise which exceedingly European clothing, a recently 
acquired mustache, and the remnants of a tongue I had 
once spoken rather fluently afforded by playing German 
before my fellow-passengers. To all outward appearances 
the attempt was successful, but try as I would I saw a 
German spy in every rosy-cheeked, prosperous Dutchman 
who turned his bovine eyes fixedly upon me. Herr Maltzen's 
office hours were not imtil five in the afternoon. When 
at last I was ushered into his august presence I summoned 
my best German accent and laid as much stress as was 
becoming on some distant relatives who — the past five 
years willing — still dwelt within the Empire. 

"The primary question, of course," pronounced Herr 
Maltzen, in the precise, resonant language of his calling, 
"is, are you German or are you an American?" 

"American, certainly," I replied. 

"Ah, then it will be difficult, extremely difficult," boomed 
the immaculate Teuton, solemnly. "Up to nine days ago 
I was permitted to pass personally on the credentials of 
foreign correspondents. But now they must be referred 
to Berlin. If you care to make official application ..." 

"I hereby do so." 

"Unfortunately, it is not so simple as that. The ap- 
plication must be in writing, giving references to several 
persons of the responsible class in Germany, with a state- 
PS 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

ment of your activities during the war, copies of your 
credentials ..." 

"And how soon could I expect the answer?" 

"With the very best of luck in two weeks, more probably 
three or four." 

I returned to Rotterdam in a somewhat dazed condition, 
having left Herr Maltzen with the impression that I had 
gone to think the problem over. Nor was that a false 
impression. It was more of a problem than even the 
suave diplomat suspected. It happened that I had a bare 
six weeks left for a tramp "over in Germany." If I frittered 
away three-fourths of them among the placid and contented 
Dutchmen, there would not be much left except the regret 
of having giving up the privilege of returning home — 
eventually — under army pay and transportation. More- 
over, rumblings from Paris indicated that by that time a 
trip through Germany would be of slight interest. I retired 
that night more nearly convinced than ever that I was 
more properly fitted to become a protectorate under the 
mandate of some benevolent league of managers for irre- 
sponsible persons than to attempt to continue as an auton- 
omous member of society. 

Some time in the small hours I was rapped on the fore- 
head with a brilliant idea. So extraordinary an experience 
brought me to a sitting posture and full wakefulness. The 
Food Commission had a steamer leaving next day for Dan- 
zig. What could be more to my purpose than to drop off 
there and tramp back to Holland? Among my possessions 
was an elaborately non-committal letter — I had been given 
the privilege of dictating it myself — from the "Hoover 
crowd" in Paris, down toward the end of which it was 
specifically stated that, while I was not connected with the 
Food Commission, they would be glad if any courtesies 
could be shown me. Carefully read, it would have made a 
rather satisfactory prelude to the request of a starving 

96 



GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

and stranded American to be permitted to buy a half-pound 
of bacon. Carelessly perused, however, it might easily 
have been mistaken for a document of some importance, 
particularly as it was decorated with the imposing letter- 
head of the "Supreme Economic Council." But I had 
scarcely expected it to be of use until I had succeeded in 
jimmying my way into unoccupied Germany. 

The Rotterdam section of the Food Commission was 
quite willing that I go to Danzig — or any other place far 
enough away to make it impossible for me to further disturb 
their complicated labors. But their duties ceased when 
they had seen the relief-ships loaded. The ships themselves 
were under command of the navy. The buck having 
thus successfully been passed, I waded through a soggy 
snow-storm to the imposing Dutch building that housed 
our officers in blue. An exceedingly courteous naval com- 
mander gave the false impression that he was extremely 
sorry not to be able to grant my request, but the already 
overcrowded boat, the strict orders against carrying civilians 
... In short, I should have realized that red tape is not 
confined to the khaki-clad half of our fighting forces. I 
shuffled my way back into the heart of the city in my most 
downcast mood, tempered far beneath by a sneaking little 
satisfaction that at least if I could not get into Germany 
I should run no risk of being boiled in oil by the dreadful 
Sparticists or tickled to death with garden rakes by a grin- 
ning band of almond-eyed Bolsheviki. 

This would never do. The sun had already begun its 
last April descent, and I had surrendered nearly three weeks 
before the privilege of being able to sit idle and still draw a 
salary. I resolved that May should not catch me supinely 
squatting in Rotterdam. The chief bridge was soon burned. 
At the police station my identity card was stamped "out" 
so quickly as to have given a sensitive person the impression 
that the country was only too glad to be rid of him. At 

97 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

least I must leave Holland, and if I left in an easterly direc- 
tion there was only one place that I could bring up. But 
what of Herr Maltzen? My dime-novel conception of 
international espionage pictured him as having set a half- 
dozen of his most trusted agents to dogging my footsteps. 
I would outwit them! I hastened back to the hotel and 
wrote the Teuton envoy an elaborate application for per- 
mission to enter Germany, with references, copies of creden- 
tials, and touching as gently as possible on my unseemly 
activities during the war. Unfortunately, I could recall 
the name and address of only one of those distant German 
relatives of whom I had boasted; the others I was forced 
to fake, arousing new misgivings in my penny- dreadful 
conscience. In conclusion I added the subtle misleader 
that while awaiting his reply I should make the most of my 
time by journeying about Holland and possibly elsewhere. 
Then I tossed into a straw suitcase a few indispensable 
articles, the confiscation of which I felt I could survive, and 
dashed for the evening train to the eastern frontier. 

To carry out still further my movie-bred disguise I took 
third-class and mingled with the inconspicuous multitude. 
There was no use attempting to conceal myself in the coal- 
bin or to bribe the guard to lend me his uniform, for the train 
did not go beyond the border. On the platform I met an 
American lieutenant in full uniform, bound for Hamburg 
as a courier; but I cut our interview as short as courtesy 
permitted, out of respect for Herr Maltzen's lynx-eyed 
agents. The lieutenant's suggestion that I ride boldly 
with him in first-class comfort gave me a very poor impres- 
sion of his subtlety. Evidently he was not well read in 
detective and spy literature. However, there was comfort 
in the feeling of having a fellow-countryman, particularly 
one of official standing, within easy reach. 

Holland lay dormant and featureless under a soggy snow 

coverlet. Many of her hundreds of fat cattle wore canvas 

98 




3 J 



GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

jackets. Every town and village was gay with flags in 
honor of the tenth birthday of the Dutch princess, a date 
of great importance within the little kingdom, though quite 
unnoticed by the world at large. The prosperous, well- 
dressed workmen in my compartment, having been incon- 
spicuously let into the secret that I was a German, jokingly- 
seriously inquired whether I was a Sparticist or a Bol- 
shevik. It was evident that they were too weU fed to 
have any sympathy for either. Then they took to com- 
plaining that my putative fatherland did not send them 
enough coal, asserting that thousands had died in Holland 
for lack of heat during the past few winters. Beyond 
Utrecht the long stretch of sterile sand-dunes aroused a 
well-schooled carpenter whose German was fluent to explain 
why Holland could not agree to any exchange of territory 
with Belgium. To give up the strip of land opposite 
Flushing would mean making useless the strong Dutch 
fortifications there. The piece farther east offered in 
exchange looked all very well on the map, but it was just 
such useless heather as this we were gazing out upon. 
Holland could not accept a slice of Germany — Emden, for 
instance — instead, because that would be certain sooner 
or later to lead to war. Of course, he added, teasingly, 
Holland could beat Germany with wooden shoes now, 
but ten years hence it would not be so easy. Besides, the 
Dutch did not care for a part of Belgium, though the 
Flemish population was eager to join them. They were 
quite content to remain a small country. Big countries, 
like rich individuals, had too many troubles, aroused too 
much envy. He might have added that the citizens of a 
small country have more opportunity of keeping in close 
touch with all national questions, but his own speech was a 
sufficient demonstration of that fact. He knew, for example, 
just what portions of the Zuyder Zee were to be reclaimed, 
and marked them on my map. All the southern end was to 
8 99 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

be pumped out, then two other strips farther north. But 
the sections north and south of Stavoren were to be left as 
they were. The soil was not worth the cost of uncovering 
it and the river Yssel must be left an outlet to the ocean, 
a viaduct sufficing to carry the railway to the peninsula 
opposite. 

It may have been the waving flags that turned the con- 
versation to the royal family. A gardener who had long 
worked for them scornfully branded as canards the rumors 
in the outside world that the German consort was not 
popular. The prince was quite democratic — royalty radiates 
democracy nowadays the world over, apparently — and was 
so genuinely Dutch that he would not speak German with 
any one who knew any other tongue. He spoke most of 
the European ones himself, and in addition Tamil and 
Hindustani. He took no part whatever in the govern- 
ment — unless he advised the Queen unofficially in the 
privacy of their own chamber— but was interested chiefly 
in the Boy Scout movement, in connection with which he 
hoped to visit the United States after the war. They were 
a very loving couple, quite as much so as if they were per- 
fectly ordinary people. 

By this time the short northern night had fallen. With 
two changes of cars I rattled on into it and brought up at 
Oldenzaal on the frontier at a late hour. The American 
lieutenant put up at the same hotel with me and we dis- 
cussed the pros and cons of my hopes of getting into Ger- 
many. They were chiefly cons. The lieutenant was quite 
willing for me to make use of his presence consistent with 
army ethics, and I retired with a slightly rosier view of 
the situation. 

In the morning this tint had wholly disappeared. I 
could not stir up a spark of optimism anywhere in my 
system. Army life has a way of sapping the springs of 
personal initiative. To say that I was 99 per cent, convinced 



GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

that I would be back in Oldenzaal before the day was over 
would be an under-statement. I would have traded my 
chances of passing the frontier for a Dutch cigar, I bought 
a ticket on the shuttle train to the first German station 
in much the same spirit that a poker-player throws his 
last dollar into a game that has been going against him since 
the night before. 

As a refinement of cruelty the Dutch authorities sub- 
mitted us to a second customs examination, even more 
searching than that at our arrival. They relentlessly fer- 
reted out the foodstuffs hidden away in the most unlikely 
corners of the smallest luggage, and dropped them under 
the low counter at their feet. An emaciated woman bearing 
an Austrian passport was thus relieved of seventeen parcels, 
down to those containing a half-pound of butter or a slice 
of cheese. In her case not even her midday train lunch 
escaped. No one could complain that the blockade require- 
ment against Holland reshipping to Germany was being 
violated at Oldenzaal. As we passed out the door to the 
platform a soldier ran his hands up and down our persons 
in search of suspicious lumps and bulges. My Dutch 
identity card had been taken away from me; I no longer 
had the legal right to exist anywhere. Once on the train, 
however, the food blockade proved to have been less water- 
tight than it had seemed. As usual, the "wise ones" had 
found means of evading it. Several experienced travelers 
had provided themselves with official authorization to 
bring in ten or twelve pounds of Lehensmittel. A few others 
aroused the envy of their fellow-passengers — once the 
boundary was passed — by producing succulent odds and 
ends from secret linings of their baggage. One loud-voiced 
individual asserted that there was much smuggling through 
the forests beside us. It is not likely, however, that the 
food that escapes the Oldenzaal search brought much relief 
to the hunger of Germany. 

lOI 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

The thin-faced Austrian woman sat hunched in a far 
comer of the compartment, noiselessly crying. Two mid- 
dle-aged Germans of the professor-municipal-employee 
caste whispered cautiously together on the opposite cushion. 
As we passed the swampy little stream that marks the 
boundary they each solemnly gave it a military salute, 
and from that moment on raised their voices to a quite 
audible pitch. One displayed a sausage he had wrapped in 
a pair of trousers. The other produced from a vest pocket 
a tiny package of paper-soap leaves, each the size of a visit- 
ing-card. He pressed three or four of them upon his com- 
panion. The latter protested that he could not accept 
so serious a sacrifice. The other insisted, and the grateful 
recipient bowed low and raised his hat twice in thanks 
before he stowed the precious leaves away among his pri- 
vate papers. They passed a few remarks about the unfair- 
ness of the food blockade, particularly since the signing of the 
armistice. One spoke scornfully of the attempt of the 
Allies to draw a line between the German government and 
the people — there was no such division, he asserted. But 
by this time we were grinding to a halt in Bentheim, in all 
probability the end of my German journey. 

The passengers and their hand-luggage jammed toward 
a door flanked by several German non-coms, and a hand- 
some young lieutenant. I pressed closely on the heels of 
the American courier. He was received with extreme 
courtesy by the German lieutenant, who personally saw to 
it that he was unmolested by boundary or customs officials, 
and conducted him to the outgoing waiting-room toward 
which we were all striving. Meanwhile a sergeant had 
studied my passport, quite innocent of the German vis6, 
dropped it into the receptacle of doubtful papers, and 
motioned to me to stand back and let the others pass, 
exactly as I had expected him to do. How ridiculous of 
me to fancy I could bluff my way through a cordon of Ger- 

I02 



GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

man officials, as if they had been French or Italian ! Would 
they shut me up or merely toss me back on the Dutch? 
The last of my legitimate fellow-passengers passed on 
into the forbidden land and left me standing quite alone 
in the little circle of German non-coms. One of them 
rescued my passport and handed it to the handsome young 
lieutenant as he returned. He looked at me questioningly. 
I addressed him in German and slipped the weak-kneed 
Food Commission letter into his hands. Perhaps — but, 
alas! my last hope gave a last despairing gasp and died; 
the lieutenant read English as easily as you or I ! 

"You see," I began, lamely, "as a correspondent, and 
more or less connected with the Food Commission, I wished 
to have a glimpse of the distribution from Hamburg — and 
I can catch one of their ships back from there to Rotterdam. 
Then as the lieutenant I am with speaks no German, I 
offered to act as interpreter for him on the way. I . . . 
I . . ." 

I was waiting, of course, to hear the attentive listener 
bellow the German version of, "You poor fish! do you 
think you can pull that kind of bull on me!" Instead, he 
bowed slightly in acknowledgment of my explanation and 
looked more closely at my passport. 

"You should have had this stamped at the German 
Legation in The Hague," he remarked, softly. 

' ' I did not know until shortly before the train left that the 
lieutenant was coming," I added, hastily, "so there was no 
time for that. I thought that, with the letter from the 
Food Commission also ..." 

Either I am really very simple — in my particular asinine 
moments I feel the certainty of that fact — or I have been 
vouchsafed the gift of putting on a very simple face. The 
German gazed an instant into my innocent eyes, then 
glanced again at the letter. 

"Yes, of course," he replied, turning toward an experience- 

103 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

faced old Feldwebel across the room. "Will you be kind 
enough to wait a moment?" 

This gentle-voiced young officer, whom I had rather 
expected to kick me a few times in the ribs and perhaps 
knock me down once or twice with the butt of his side-arm, 
returned within the period specified and handed my papers 
back to me. 

"I have not the authority myself to pass on your case," 
he explained. "I am only a Leutnant, and I shall have to 
refer it to the Oberleutnant at the Schloss in town. I do not 
think, however, that he will make the slightest difficulty." 

I thought differently. The Ober would almost cer- 
tainly be some "hard-boiled" old warrior who would sub- 
ject me to all those brutalities his underling had for some 
reason seen fit to avoid. Still there was nothing to do but 
play the game through. 

"I shall send a man with you to show the way," continued 
the lieutenant. "You have plenty of time; the train does 
not leave for two hours. Meanwhile you may as well 
finish the other formalities and be ready to go on when you 
return." 

A customs officer rummaged through my hamper. 

"No more soap?" he queried, greedily, as he caught sight 
of the two bars I possessed. Evidently he had hoped to 
find enough to warrant confiscation. His next dig un- 
earthed three cakes of commissary chocolate. He carefully 
lifted them out and carried them across the room. My 
escapade was already beginning to cost me dearly, for real 
chocolate is the European traveler's most valuable pos- 
session in war-time. He laid the precious stuff on a pair 
of scales, filled out a long green form, and handed it to me 
as he carefully tucked the chocolate back in my hamper. 

"Forty -five pfennigs duty," he said. 

At the current exchange that was nearly four cents! 

A second official halted me to inquire how much German 

104 



GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

money I had in my possession. I confessed to twenty-five 
hundred marks, and exhibited the thick wad of brand-new 
fifty-mark Scheine I carried like so much stationery in a 
coat pocket. There was no use attempting to conceal it, 
for just beyond were the little cabins where passengers were 
submitted to personal search. Luckily I had left some 
money behind in Rotterdam, in case they confiscated all 
of this. But the official was making out a new form. 

"This," he said, handing it to me, "is a certificate for the 
amount you are bringing in with you. When you leave 
Germany take this to any branch of the Reichsbank and get 
another permitting you to take out with you again whatever 
is left. Otherwise you can take only fifty marks." 

In the cabin next the one I entered a man was buttoning 
his trousers. Stories of skins being treated to a lemon 
massage to detect secret writing surged up in my memory. 
I had no concealed valuables, but I have never learned to 
submit cheerfully to the indignity of personal search. I 
turned a grim visage toward the not immaculate soldier 
who had entered with me. 

"Hollander?" he asked, as I prepared to strip. 

"American," I admitted, for once regretfully. He 
would no doubt make the most of that fact. 

"Indeed!" he said, his eyes lighting up with interest. 
"Have you any valuables on your person?" he continued, 
stopping me by a motion from removing my coat. 

"None but the money I have declared," I replied. 

"Thank you," he said, opening the door. "That is all. 
Good day." 

A thin soldier with a greenish-gray face and hollow eyes, 
dressed in field gray that had seen long service, was assigned 
to conduct me to the Schloss. Twice on the way he pro- 
tested that I was walking too fast for him. A long alley- 
way of splendid trees led to the town, the population of 
which was very noticeably thinner and less buoyant of 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

step than the Hollanders a few miles behind. At the foot 
of an aged castle on a hillock the soldier opened the door 
of a former lodge and stepped in after me. The military 
office strikingly resembled one of our own — little except 
the feldgrau instead of khaki was different. A half-dozen 
soldiers and three or four non-coms, were lounging at several 
tables sprinkled with papers, ink-bottles, and official stamps. 
Two typewriters sat silent, a sheet of unfinished business 
drooping over their rolls. Three privates were "horse- 
playing" in one corner; two others were loudly engaged 
in a friendly argument; the rest were reading newspapers 
or himiorous weeklies; and all were smoking. The Feldwebel 
in charge laid his cigarette on his desk and stepped toward 
me. My guide sat down like a man who had finished a long 
day's journey and left me to state my own case. I retold 
my story. At the word "American" the soldiers slowly 
looked up, then gradually gathered around me. Their 
faces were entirely friendly, with a touch of curiosity. 
They asked a few simple questions, chiefly on the subject 
of food and tobacco conditions in Allied territory. One 
wished to know how soon I thought it would be possible to 
emigrate to America. The Feldwebel looked at my papers, 
sat down at his desk with them, and reached for an official 
stamp. Then he seemed to change his mind, rose, and 
entered an inner office. A middle-aged, rather hard-faced 
first lieutenant came out with him. The soldiers did not 
even rise to their feet. The Ober glanced at me, then at 
my papers in the hands of the Feldwebel. 

"I see no objection," he said, then turned on his heel 
and disappeared. 

When the Feldwebel had indorsed my passport I sug- 
gested that he stamp the Food Commission also. A Ger- 
man military imprint would give it the final touch within 
the Empire, at least for any officials who did not read 

EngHsh well. The under-officer carried out the suggestion 

io6 



GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

without comment, and handed the papers back to me. I 
had permission to go when I chose. 

Before I had done so, thanks to the continued curiosity 
of the soldiers, the Oherleutnant sent word that he wished 
to see me. I kicked myself inwardly for not having gone 
while the going was good, and entered his private office. 
He motioned me to a chair, sat down himself, and fell 
to asking me questions. They were fully as disconnected 
and trivial as many an interrogation of prisoners I had 
heard from the lips of American officers. My respect for 
the stern discipline and trained staff of the German army 
was rapidly oozing away. Like his soldiers, the C. O. of 
Bentheim seemed chiefly interested in the plenitude and 
price of food and tobacco in France and Belgium. Then 
he inquired what people were saying in Paris of the peace 
conditions and how soon they expected them to be ready. 

''Sie kriegen keine Friede — they'll get no peace!" he cried 
suddenly, with considerable heat, when I had mumbled 
some sort of answer. Then he abruptly changed the sub- 
ject, without indicating just what form the lack of peace 
would take, and returned again to food. 

"What will Wilson do about his Fourteen Points?" he 
interrupted, somewhat later. 

"All he can," I answered evasively, having had no private 
tip on the President's plans. 

"Yes, but what can he," demanded the German, "against 
that other pair? We shall all be swamped with Bolshevism 
— America along with the rest of us ! 

"Luckily for you the train comes in the morning," he 
concluded, rising to indicate that the interview was at an 
end. "You would not have found us here this afternoon. 
May first is a national holiday this year, for the first time. 
We are a repubHc now, with socialistic leanings," he ended, 
half savagely, half sneeringly. 

An hour later I was speeding toward Berlin on a fast 

107 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

express. I had always found that a dash at the heart of 
things was apt to be surer than a dilly-dallying about the 
outskirts. Once in the capital, I could lay my plans on a 
sounder foundation than by setting out on my proposed 
tramp so near the border. To be sure, I had not ventured 
to buy a ticket to Berlin at a wicket surrounded by a dozen 
soldiers who had heard me assert that I was going to Ham- 
burg. But — Dame Fortune seeming to have taken me 
under her wing for the day — a Dutch trainman with whom 
I fell into conversation chanced to have such a ticket in 
his pocket, which he was only too glad to sell. As a matter 
of fact, I doubt whether the open purchase of the bit of 
cardboard would have aroused any comment, much less 
created any difficulties. Looking back on it now from the 
pinnacle of weeks of travel in all parts of the German 
Empire, by every possible means of locomotion, that teapot - 
tempest of passing the frontier seems far more than ridicu- 
lous. It is possible that 'the combination of circumstances 
made admittance — once gained — seem easier than it really 
is. But I cannot shake off the impression that the difficulties 
were almost wholly within my own disordered brain — 
disordered because of the wild tales that had been dished 
out to us by the Allied press. It was, of course, to the 
advantage of the correspondents fluttering about the dove- 
cote at the head of Unter den Linden to create the impres- 
sion that the only way to get into Germany was to cross 
the frontier on hands and knees in the darkest hour of a 
dark night at the most swampy and inaccessible spot, with 
a rabbit's foot grasped firmly in one hand and the last will 
and testament in the other. The blague served at least 
two purposes — perfectly legitimate purposes at that, from 
a professional point of view — it made "bully good reading" 
at home, and it scared off competition, in the form of other 
correspondents, whose timorous natures precluded the 
possibility of attempting the perilous passage. 

io8 



GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

Though it sap all the succeeding pages of the "suspense** 
so indispensable to continued interest, I may as well confess 
here as latep- that I moved about Germany with perfect 
freedom during all my stay there, far more freely than I 
could have at the same date in either Allied or neutral 
countries, that neither detectives nor spies dogged my 
footsteps nor did policemen halt me on every comer to 
demand my authority for being at large. Lest he hover 
menacingly in the background of some timorous reader's 
memory, embittering any dewdrops of pleasure he may 
wring from this tale, let me say at once that I never again 
heard from or of the dreadful Herr Maltzen. Indeed, the 
castle of Bentheim had scarcely disappeared below the 
wet green horizon of a late spring when I caught myself 
grumbling that these simple Germans had wrecked what 
should have been a tale to cause the longest hair to stand 
stiffly erect and the most pachydermous skin to develop 
goose-flesh. Saddest of all — let us have the worst and be 
done with it — they continued that exasperating simplicity 
to the end, and left me little else for all my labors than the 
idle vaporings of a summer tourist. 

Contrary to my expectations, the train was an excellent 
Schnellzug, making rare stops and riding as easily as if the 
armistice conditions had not so much as mentioned rolling- 
stock. The plush covering of several seats was missing, 
as beyond the Rhine, but things were as orderly, the train- 
men as polite and diligently bent on doing their duty as 
if they had been under the military command of an exacting 
enemy. In our first-class compartment there were two 
American lieutenants in uniform, yet there was not so much 
as a facial protest that they should be occupying seats 
while German men and women stood in the corridor. There 
was, to be sure, a bit of rather cold staring, and once what 
might have been called an "incident." At Osnabriick we 
were joined by a cropped-headed young German, wearing 

109 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

the ribbon of the Iron Cross in the lapel of his civilian 
clothing, but whom a chance word informed us was still a 
captain, accompanied by two older men. They sat in 
expressionless silence for a time; then one of the older men 
said, testily: 

"Let's see if we can't find a more congenial compartment. 
Here there is too much English spoken." And the trio dis- 
appeared. As a matter of fact, the English they heard 
was being chiefly spoken by a Dutch diplomat who had fallen 
in with us. I could not reflect, however, that to have spoken 
German in a French train at that date would have been 
positively dangerous. The lieutenants and the diplomat 
asserted that they had never before seen any such evidence 
of feeling among the defeated enemy, and it is the only 
strained situation of the kind that I recall having witnessed 
during all my German journey. When we changed cars at 
Lohne soldiers and civilians gazed rather coldly, as well 
as curiously, at the lieutenants, yet even when people 
chatted and laughed with them there was no outward 
evidence of protest. 

There were very few cattle and almost no .aborers in the 
fields, though the holiday may have accounted for the 
absence of the latter. The landscape looked everywhere 
well cultivated and there were no signs that any except 
purposely pasture lands had been allowed to lie fallow. 
Near Hanover, with its great engine-works, stood hundreds 
of rusted locomotives which had been refused by the Allies. 
Among them were large nimibers that the Germans had 
drawn from Russia and which were now useless even to 
the Teutons, since they were naphtha-burners, and naphtha 
was no longer to be had within the Empire. Acres upon 
acres of cars, both passenger and freight, filled another 
yard — cars from Posen, from Breslau, from Miinchen, and 
from Konigsberg, from every corner of Germany. At 

Nauen the masts of the great wireless station from which 

no 



''Siidsen. PlessbL-rg. Hilberg. Holni.L» 
' c^enert. Tannert ""^S 












^ ^i^chiiiniiw 



POSTERS TELL BERLINERS WHEN AND WHERE THEY CAN GET SIX OUNCES OF 
MARMALADE OR A POUND OF POTATOES 




•V»msf'Du.di,es 








AN APPEAL FOR RECRUITS TO "PROTECT THE FATHERLAND FROM THE MENACE 

OF BOLSHEVISM" 



GETTING NEUTRALIZED 

we had picked up most of our German news during the war 
loomed into the evening sky, and beyond were some immense 
ZeppeHn hangars bulking above the flat landscape like dis- 
tant mountains. We reached Berlin on time and before 
dark. May-day had brought all city transportation to a 
standstill; neither taxi, carriage, nor tramcar was to be 
found — though it was reported that this first official national 
holiday had been the tamest in years. Farmers' carts and 
beer wagons had been turned into carryalls and transported 
a score of passengers each, seated precariously on loose 
boards, from station to station. Hotels were as packed 
as they seem to be in all capitals in war-time. The magnif- 
icent Adlon, housing the Allied commissions, laughed in 
my face. For two hours I canvassed that section of the city 
and finally paid eleven marks for accommodation in a hotel 
of decayed gentility at the door of which an old sign read: 
"Fine rooms on the garden, two marks and upward." To 
be sure, the rate of exchange made the difference consider- 
ably less than it seemed — to those who had purchased their 
marks in the foreign market. 



VI 



THE HEART OF THE HUNGRY EMPIRE 

IN many districts of Germany the traveler's eye was 
frequently drawn, during the hectic spring of 191 9, to a 
large colored poster. It showed two men; the one cold, 
gaunt, and hungry, huddled in the rags of his old uniform, 
was shuffling through the snow, with a large, dismally 
gray city in the background; the other, looking well nour- 
ished and cheerful, wearing a comfortable new civilian 
suit, was emerging from a smoke-belching factory and 
waving gaily in the air a handful of twenty-mark notes. 
Under the picture ran the device: "Don't go to Berlin! 
There every one is hungry and you will find no work. In- 
stead, go to the nearest government employment office" — 
the address of the most convenient being added. 

Despite this and many similar efforts on the part of the 
authorities and private agencies, people kept crowding into 
the capital. Not even a personal appeal from his new 
"Reichspresident" Ebert to the ordinarily laborious and 
persistent German to remain at home and keep at work, 
rather than to try to better his lot by this vain pilgrimage, 
succeeded in shutting off the Berlinward stream of dis- 
contented humanity. War and social disorders seem 
always to bring this influx into the national metropolis, the 
world over. It is man's nature to wander in search of 
happiness when he is not happy, seldom recognizing that he 

is carrying his unhappiness with him and that it is but 

112 



THE HEART OF THE HUNGRY EMPIRE 

slightly dependent upon the particular spot he inhabits. 
In this case the general misery was largely due to the 
gnawings of hunger, and surely Berlin, in the year of grace 
1919, was the last place in all Germany in which to seek 
alleviation from that particular misfortune. Yet the quest 
of the rainbow end went hopefully on, until the tenements 
of the capital were gorged with famished provincials and her 
newspapers teemed with offers of substantial rewards to 
any one who would furnish information of rooms, apart- 
ments, or dwelling-houses for rent. 

That Berlin was hungry was all too evident, so patent, 
in fact, that I feel it my duty to set down in a place apart 
the gruesome details of famine and warn the reader to 
peruse them only in the presence of a full-course dinner. 
But the overcrowding was at first glance less apparent. 
Indeed, a superficial glimpse of the heart of Prussianism 
showed it surprisingly like what it had been a decade before. 
The great outdoor essentials were virtually unaltered. 
Only as one amassed bit by bit into a convincing whole 
the minor evidences of change, as an experienced lawyer 
pieces together the scattered threads of circumstantial 
proof, did one reach the conclusion that Berlin was no 
longer what she used to be. Her great arteries of suburban 
railways, her elevated and underground, pulsated regularly, 
without even that clogging of circulation that threatened 
the civic health of her great temperamental rival to the 
west. Her shops and business houses seemed, except in 
one particular, well stocked and prosperous; her sources 
of amusement were many and well patronized. Her street 
throngs certainly were not shabby in appearance and they 
showed no outward signs of leading a hampered existence. 
True, they were unusually gaunt-featured — but here we are 
encroaching on ground to be explored under more propitious 
alimentary circumstances. 

Of the revolution, real or feigned, through which it had 

113 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

recently passed, the city bore surprisingly few scars. Three 
or four government buildings were pockmarked with bullet- 
holes that carried the mind back to "election" days in the 
capitals of tropical America; over in Alexanderplatz the 
bricks and stones flaunted a goodly number of shrapnel 
and machine-gun wounds. But that was all, or almost all, 
the proof of violence that remained. The palaces of the 
late Kaiser stood like abandoned warehouses ; the Reichstag 
building was cold and silent, testifying to a change of venue 
for the government on trial, if not of regime. Yet it could 
not, after all, have been much of a "revolution" that had left 
unscathed those thirty-two immense and sometimes pot- 
bellied images of the noble HohenzoUerns, elaborately 
carved in stone, which still oppressed the stroller along 
the Sieges Allee in the otherwise pleasant Tiergarten. The 
massive wooden Hindenburg at the end of it, a veritable 
personification of brute strength from cropped head to 
well-planted feet, stared down upon puny mankind as of 
yore, though, to be sure, he looked rather neglected; the 
nailing had never been completed and the rare visitors 
passed him by now without any attempt to hammer home 
their homage. Farther on that other man of iron gazed 
away across the esplanade as if he saw nothing in this 
temporary abandonment of his principles to cause serious 
misgivings. 

But perhaps all this will in time be swept away, for 
there were signs pointing in that direction. The city 
coimcil of Berlin had already decreed that all pictures 
and statues of the HohenzoUerns, "especially those of the 
deposed Kaiser," must be removed from the public halls 
and schoolrooms. That of itself would constitute a decided 
change in the capital. In these first days of May several 
hundred busts and countless likenesses of Wilhelm II and 
his family had been banished to the cellars of municipal 
buildings, not, be it noted, far enough away to make restora- 

114 




A MEETING OF PROTEST AGAINST THE PEACE TERMS ON THE STEPS OF THE 
REICHSTAG BUILDING 




A FUNEREAL PROCESSION OF PROTESTERS MARCHING DOWN UNTER DEN LINDEN 



THE HEART OF THE HUNGRY EMPIRE 

tion difficult. "Among the busts," said one of the local 
papers, "are some of real artistic value" — I cannot, of 
course, vouch for the esthetic sense of the editor — "as for 
example the marble ones of Kaiser Wilhelm I and of Kaiser 
Friedrich III, which for many years have adorned the 
meeting-place of the Municipal Council itself." For all 
this there was no lack of graven images of the discredited 
War Lord and his tribe still on exhibition; the portraits 
"adorning" private residences alone could have filled 
many more cellars. It would be difficult to eradicate in a 
few brief months a trade-mark which had been stamped 
into every article of common or uncommon use. 

In return for these artistic losses the city was taking 
on new decorations, in the form of placards and posters 
unknown in kaiserly days. To begin with, there were the 
violent representations in color of what the Bolshevists 
were alleged to perpetrate on the civil population that fell 
under their bloody misrule, which stared from every con- 
spicuous wall unprotected by the stern announcement 
that bill-posting was verboten. These all ended with an 
appeal for volunteers and money to halt "the menace that 
is already knocking at the eastern gates of the Fatherland." 
Then there were the more direct enticements to recruits for 
newly formed Freicorps — "the protective home guard," 
their authors called it — usually named for the officer whose 
signature as commander appeared at the bottom of the 
poster. Even the newspapers carried full-page advertise- 
ments setting forth the advantages of enrolling in the inde- 
pendent battahon of Major B or the splendid regiment 

of Colonel S — — , a far cry indeed from the days of univer- 
sal compulsory service. "If you will join my company," 
ran these glowing promises, after long-winded appeals to 
patriotism, "you will be commanded by experienced officers, 
such as the undersigned, and you will be lodged, fed, and 
well paid by the government. What better occupation 

9 115 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

can you find?" These were the freiwillige bands that com- 
posed the German army of 19 19, semi-independent groups, 
loosely disciplined, and bearing the name of some officer 
of the old regime. They may not constitute an overpower- 
ing force, but there is always the possibility that some 
man of magnetism and Napoleonic ambition may gather 
them all together and become a military dictator. Besides, 
there is still the trickery of militaristic Germany to be 
reckoned with, genius for subterfuge that will cover up 
real training under the pretense of police forces, of tum- 
vereins and of "athletic unions." 

Thus far these omnipresent appeals did not seem to have 
met with overwhelming success. The soldiers guarding 
Berlin were virtually all boys of twenty or under ; the older 
men were probably "fed up with it." Nor did the insolent 
Prussian officer of former days any longer lord it over the 
civilian population. He had laid aside his saber and in 
most cases his uniform, and perhaps felt safer in his semi- 
disguise of "civies" as he mingled with the throng. Mili- 
tary automobiles carrying stiff-necked generals or haughty 
civilians in silk hats still occasionally blasted their way 
down Unter den Linden as commandingly as ever did the 
Kaiser, but they were wont to halt and grow very quiet 
when the plebeian herd became dense enough to demand 
its right of way. 

Before we leave the subject of posters, however, let us 
take a glimpse at those appealing for aid to the Kriegs 
und Zivilgefangenen which inundated the city. The 
picture showed a group of German prisoners, still in their 
red-banded caps and in full uniform — as if the ravages of 
time and their captors had not so much as spotted a shoulder- 
strap — peering sadly out through a wire barricade. It 
was plain to see that some German at home had posed for 
the artist, the beings he depicted were so pitifully gaunt 
and hungry in appearance. I have seen many thousand 

116 



THE HEART OF THE HUNGRY EMPIRE 

German prisoners in France, and I cannot recall one who 
did not look far better nourished than his fellow-country- 
men beyond the Rhine, more full of health, in fact, than the 
civilian population about the detention camps. They may 
regret leaving comparative abundance for their hungry 
Fatherland, when the day of exodus finally comes. But 
the Germans at home were greatly wrought up about their 
eight hundred thousand prisoners. Many had convinced 
themselves that they would never be returned; the general 
impression of their sad lot brought continuous contributions 
to the boys and girls who rattled money-cans in the faces 
of passers-by, even those who wore an Allied uniform, all 
over Berlin. Stories of the mistreatment of prisoners were 
quite as current and fully as heartrending in Germany as 
they were on the other side of the battle-line. Apparently 
captives are always mishandled — by the enemy, and too 
well treated on the side of the speaker, a phenomenon even 
of our own Civil War. I have no personal knowledge of the 
lot of Allied prisoners of war in Germany, but this much is 
certain of those wearing the field gray — that the French 
neglected them both as to food and work; that the British 
treated them fairly in both matters, and that the Americans 
overfed and underworked them. But it was a hopeless 
task to try to convince their fellow-countrymen that they 
were not one and all suffering daily the tortures of the 
damned. 

Perhaps the greatest surprise that Berlin had in store 
for me was the complete safety which her recent enemies 
enjoyed there. With German delegates to the Peace 
Conference closely guarded behind barbed wire in Ver- 
sailles, and German correspondents forbidden even to talk 
to the incensed crowds that gathered along those barriers, 
it was astounding to find that American and Allied officers 
and men, in full uniform, wandered freely about the Prussian 
capital at all hours. Doughboys were quite as much at 

117 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

home along Unter den Linden as if they had been strolling 
down Main Street in Des Moines. Young Germans in 
iron hats guarded the entrance to the princely Adlon, 
housing the various enemy missions, but any one who chose 
passed freely in or out, whatever his nationality, his busi- 
ness or lack thereof, or his garb. Olive drab attracted no 
more attention in Berlin than it did in Coblenz. German 
chauffeurs drove poilus and their officers about the streets 
as nonchalantly as if they had been taxi-drivers in Paris. 
To be sure, most uniformed visitors stuck rather closely 
to the center of town, but that was due either to false 
impressions of danger or to lack of curiosity— and perhaps 
also to the dread of getting out of touch with their own 
food-supply. For as a matter of experience they were fully 
as safe in Berlin as in Paris or New York — possibly a trifle 
more so — they seemed to run less risk of being separated, 
legally or forcibly, from their possessions. The hair- 
raising tales which correspondents poured out over the 
wires via Copenhagen were chiefly instigated by their 
clamoring editors and readers at home. Let a few random 
shots be fired somewhere in the city and the scribes were 
at ease for another day — and the world gasped once more 
at the bloody anarchy reigning in Berlin, while the stodgy 
Berliner went on about his business, totally oblivious of the 
battle that was supposed to be seething about him. 

In January, 191 9, a group of American officers entered one 
of the principal restaurants of Berlin and ordered dinner. 
At that date our olive drab was rare enough in the capital 
to attract general attention. A civilian at a neighboring 
table, somewhat the worse for bottled animosity, gave vent 
to his wrath at sight of the visitors. Having no desire to 
precipitate a scene, they rose to leaveV Several German 
officers sprang to their feet and begged them to remain, 
assuring them that the disturber would be silenced or 

ejected. The Americans declined to stay, whereupon the 

118 



THE HEART OF THE HUNGRY EMPIRE 

ranking German apologized for the unseemly conduct of an 
ill-bred fellow-countryman and invited the group to be his 
guests there the following evening. 

Now I must take issue with most American travelers in 
Germany during the armistice that the general attitude 
of courtesy was either pretense, bidding for favor, or "propa- 
ganda" directed by those higher up. In the first place, 
a great many Germans did not at that date admit that the 
upstarts who had suddenly risen to power were capable 
of directing their personal conduct. Moreover, I have 
met scores of persons who were neither astute enough nor 
closely enough in touch with those outlining national 
policies to take part in any concerted plan to curry favor 
with their conquerors. I have, furthermore, often success- 
fully posed as a German or as the subject of a friendly or 
neutral power, and have found the attitude toward their 
enemies not one whit different under those circumstances 
than when they were knowingly speaking to an enemy. 

There were undoubtedly many who deliberately sought 
to gain advantage by wearing a mask of friendliness; but 
there were fully as many who declined to depart from their 
customary politeness, whatever the provocation. 

Two national characteristics which revolution had not 
greatly altered were the habit of commanding rather than 
requesting and of looking to the government to take a 
paternal attitude toward its subjects. The stem Verboten 
still stared down upon the masses at every corner and angle. 
It reminded one of the sign in some of our rougher Western 
towns bearing the information that "Gentlemen will not 
spit on the floor; others must not," and carrying the impli- 
cation that the populace cannot be intrusted to its own 
instincts for decency. If only the German could learn 
the value of moral suasion, the often greater effectiveness 
of a "Please" than of an iron-fisted "Don't"! Perhaps 
it would require a new viewpoint toward life to give full 

119 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

strength to the gentler form among a people xong trained 
to listen only to the sterner admonition. The great trouble 
with the verboten attitude is that if those in command ac- 
cidentally overlook verboting something, people are almost 
certain to do it. Their atrophied sense of right and wrong 
gives them no gage of personal conduct. Then there is 
always the man to be reckoned with who does a thing 
simply because it is verboten — though he is rarely a German. 
It is in keeping with this commanding manner that the 
ruling class fails to give the rank and file credit for common 
horse sense. Instead of the Anglo-Saxon custom of trusting 
the individual to take care of himself, German paternalism 
flashes constantly in his face signs and placards proffering 
officious advice on every conceivable subject. He is warned 
to stamp his letters before mailing them, to avoid draughts 
if he would keep his health ; he is verboten to step off a tram- 
car in motion, lest he break his precious neck, and so on 
through all the possibilities of earthly existence, until any 
but a German would feel like the victim of one of those 
motherly women whose extreme solicitude becomes in 
practice a constant nagging. The Teuton, however, seems 
to like it, and he grows so accustomed to receiving or impart- 
ing information by means of placards that his very shop- 
windows are ridiculously littered with them. Here an en- 
graved card solemnly announces, "This is a suit of clothes"; 
there another asserts — more or less truthfully — "Cigars — 
to smoke." One comes to the point of wondering whether 
the German does not need most of all to be let alone until 
he learns to take care of himself and to behave of his own 
free will. Then he might in time recognize that liberty 
is objective as well as subjective; that there is true philoso- 
phy in the Anglo-Saxon contention that "every man's 
home is his castle." Perhaps he is already on his way 
to that goal. There were promising signs that Germany 
is growing less streng than she used to be, more easy-going, 

I20 



THE HEART OF THE HUNGRY EMPIRE 

more human — unless what seemed to be that was the 
merely temporary apathy of under-nourishment. 

The war had made fewer changes in the public and busi- 
ness world of the Fatherland than in Allied countries. 
Pariserplatz and Franzosischerstrasse retained their names. 
Down in Munich the finest park was still the Englische 
Garten. Most American stocks were quoted in the news- 
papers. One might still get one's mail — if any arrived — 
through the American Express Company, though its bank- 
ing business was in abeyance. The repertoire of the once 
Royal Opera included the works of Allied composers, given 
only in German, to be sure, but that was the custom even 
before the war. Shopkeepers of the tourist-baiting class 
spoke English or French on the slightest provocation — 
often with provoking insistence. I found myself suddenly 
in need of business cards with which to impress the natives, 
and the first printing-shop furnished them within three 
hours. When I returned to the capital from one of my 
jaunts into the provinces with a batch of films that must 
be developed and delivered that same evening, the seem- 
ingly impossible was accomplished. I suggested that I 
carry them off wet, directly after the hypo bath, washing 
and drying them in my hotel room in time to catch a train 
at dawn. Where a Frenchman or an Italian would have 
thrown up his hands in horror at so unprecedented an 
arrangement, the amenable Teuton agreed at once to the 
feasibility of the scheme. Thus commerce strode aggres- 
sively on, irrespective of the customer's nationality, and 
with the customary German adaptability. 

Some lines of business had, of course, been hard hit by 
the war. There was that, for instance, of individual trans- 
portation, public or private. Now and then an iron- tired 
automobile screamed by along Unter den Linden, but though 
the government was offering machines as cheaply as two 
thousand marks each, the scarcity and prohibitive price 

121 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

of "benzine" made purchasers rare. In the collections of 
dilapidated outfits waiting for fares at railway stations 
and public squares it was a question whether horse, coach- 
man, or carriage was nearest to the brink of starvation. 
The animals were miserable runts that were of no military- 
use even before the scarcity of fodder reduced them to 
their resemblance to museum skeletons. The sallow-faced 
drivers seemed to envy the beasts the handful of bran they 
were forced to grant them daily. Their vagabond garb 
was sadly in keeping with the junk on wheels in which 
they rattled languidly away when a new victim succtimbed 
to their hollow-eyed pleading. Most of Berlin seemed to 
prefer to walk, and that not merely because the legal fares 
had recently been doubled. Taxis might have one or two 
real rubber tires, aged and patched, but still pump-upable; 
the others were almost sure to be some astonishing sub- 
stitute which gave the machine a resemblance to a war 
victim with one leg — or, more exactly, to a three-legged dog. 
The most nearly successful Ersatz tires were iron rims with a 
score of little steel springs within them, yet even those did 
not make joy-riding popular. 

On this subject of Ersatz, or far-fetched substitutes for 
the real thing, many pages might be written, even without 
trespassing for the moment on the forbidden territory of 
food. The department stores were veritable museums of 
Ersatz articles. With real shoes costing about sixty dollars, 
and real clothing running them a close race, it was essential 
that the salesman should be able to appease the wrathful 
customer by offering him "something else — er — almost as 
good." The shoe substitutes alone made the shop-windows 
a constant source of amazement and interest. Those with 
frankly wooden soles and cloth tops were offered for as 
little as seven marks. The more ambitious contraptions, 
ranging from these simple corn-torturers improved with a 
half-dozen iron hinges in the sole to those laboriously pieced 

122 



THE HEART OF THE HUNGRY EMPIRE 

together out of scraps of leather that suggested the ultimate 
fate of the window-straps missing from railway carriages, 
ran the whole gamut of prices, up to within a few dollars 
of the genuine article. Personally, I have never seen a 
German in Ersatz footwear, with the exception of a few 
working in their gardens. But on the theory of no smoke 
without some fire the immense stocks displayed all over 
the country were prima-facie evidence of a considerable 
demand. Possibly the substitutes were reserved for interior 
domestic use — fetching styles of carpet slippers. On the 
street the German still succeeded somehow in holding his 
sartorial own, perhaps by the zealous husbanding of his 
pre-war wardrobe. 

Look where you would you were sure to find some new 
Ersatz brazenly staring you in the face. Clothing, furni- 
ture, toys, pictures, drugs, tapestries, bicycles, tools, hand- 
bags, string, galoshes, the very money in your pocket, were 
but imitations of the real thing. Examine the box of 
matches you acquired at last with much patience and 
diplomacy and you found it marked, "Without sulphur and 
without phosphorus" — a sad fact that would soon have 
made itself apparent without formal announcement. The 
wood was still genuine; thanks to their scientific forestry, 
the Germans have not yet run out of that. But many of 
their great forests are thinned out like the hair of the middle- 
aged male — and the loss as cleverly concealed. There has 
been much Teutonic boasting on this subject of Ersatz, 
but since the armistice, at least, it had changed to wailing, 
for even if he ever seriously believed otherwise the German 
had discovered that the vast majority of his laborious 
substitutes did not substitute. 

As we are carefully avoiding the mention of food, the 
most grievous source of annoyance to the rank and file 
of which we can speak here is the lack of tobacco. In 
contrast with the rest of the country there were plenty 

123 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

of cigars in Berlin — apparently, until one found that the 
heaps of boxes adorning tobacconists' windows were plac- 
arded '^Nur here Kisten," or at best were filled with 
rolls of some species of weed that could not claim the most 
distant relationship to the fragrant leaf of Virginia. I 
indulged one day, before I had found the open sesame to 
the American commissary, in one of the most promising 
of those mysterious vegetables, at two marks a throw. 
The taste is with me yet. American officers at the Adlon 
sometimes ventured to leave food-supplies in the drawers 
of their desks, but their cigars they locked in the safe, 
along with their secret papers and real money. In the 
highest-priced restaurant of Berlin the shout of, "Waiter, 
bring two cigarettes!" was sure to focus aU eyes on the 
prosperous individual who could still subject his fortune 
to such extravagance. Here and there along Friedrich- 
strasse hawkers assailed passers-by with raucous cries of 
"English and American tobacco!" Which proved not only 
that the German had lost all national feeling on this pain- 
ful subject, but that the British Tommy and the American 
doughboy had brought with them some of the tricks they 
had learned in France. 

These street-comer venders, not merely of the only real 
tobacco to be publicly had in Berlin, but of newspapers, 
post-cards, and the like, were more apt than not to be 
ex-soldiers in field gray, sometimes as high in rank as Feld- 
webels. Many others struggled for livelihood by wandering 
like gipsies from one cheap cafe to another, playing some 
form of musical instrument and taking up collections from 
the clients, often with abashed faces. Which brings us to 
the question of gaiety in Berlin. Newspapers, posters, 
and blazing electric signs called constant attention to count- 
less cafe, cabaret, cinema, and theater entertainments. 
Every one of them I visited was well filled, if not over- 
crowded. On the whole they were distinctly immoral 

124 



THE HEART OF THE HUNGRY EMPIRE 

in tone or suggestion. Berlin seems to be running more 
and more to this sort of thing. There is something amiss 
in the country whose chief newspaper carries the conspicu- 
ous announcement: "Nakedness! Fine artistic postals 
now ready to be delivered to the trade," or with the city 
where scores of street-comers are adorned by crowds of men 
huddled around a sneaking vender of indecent pictures. 
Similar scenes offend the eye in most large cities the world 
over, of course, but something seemed to suggest that 
Berlin was unusually given to this traffic. The French 
claim that theirs is at heart the moral race and that the 
Boche is a leader in immorality, and they cite many in- 
stances of prisoners found in possession of disgusting photo- 
graphs as one of the proofs of their contention. Peephole 
shows were not the least popular of the Berliner's evening 
amusements. His streets, however, were far freer of the 
painted stalkers by night than those of Paris, and the out- 
casts less aggressive in their tactics. Gambling, and with 
it the police corruption that seems to batten best under the 
democratic form of government, was reported to be growing 
apace, with new "clubs" springing up nightly. Under the 
monarchy these were by no means lacking, but they were 
more "select," more exclusive — in other words, less demo- 
cratic. Even the government had taken on a Spanish 
characteristic in this respect and countenanced a public 
lottery, ostensibly, at least, for the benefit of "sucklings." 

At the middle-class theaters the same rarely musical 
and never comic inanities that hamper the advancement 
of histrionic art in other countries still held sway, with 
perhaps an increasing tendency toward the risquL The 
crowd roared as of yore, munched its black-bread sand- 
wiches between the acts, and seemed for the moment highly 
satisfied with life. In contrast there were always seats to be 
had at the performances of literary merit and at the opera, 
though the war does not seem to have subjected them to 

125 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

any special hardships. The investment of a ticket at the 
house of song brought high interest — ^particularly to the 
foreigner, for the best orchestra seats were still eight marks 
at matinees and twelve in the evening, a mere sixty cents or 
a dollar at the armistice rate of exchange. I remember 
with especial pleasure excellent performances of "Eurydice" 
and of "Martha." The audience was a plain, bourgeois 
gathering, with evening dress as lacking as "roughnecks." 
In the foyer buffet, in contrast to Paris, prices were 
exceedingly reasonable, but the most popular offerings, 
next to the watery beer, were plates of potatoes, bologna, 
pickled fish, and hard-boiled eggs, for, though I should not 
mention it here, the German theater-goer of these days 
is as constantly munching as an Arab. In the gorgeous 
Kaiser's box sat one lone lieutenant and his wife, while a 
cold-eyed old retainer in livery kept guard outside the 
locked door as if he were still holding the place for his 
beloved emperor. 

Though ostensibly the same, German prices were vastly 
lower for visitors than for the native residents. For the 
first time I had something of the sensation of being a 
millionaire — cost was of slight importance. The marks I 
spent in Germany I bought at an average of two for fifteen 
cents; had I delayed longer in exchanging I might have 
had them still cheaper. In some lines, notably in that 
we are for the moment avoiding, prices, of course, had 
increased accordingly, sometimes outdistancing the advan- 
tages of the low rate of exchange. But the rank and file 
still clung to the old standards; it was a hopeless task to 
try to make the man in the street understand that the 
mark was no longer a mark. He went so far as to accuse 
the American government of profiteering, because the 
bacon it was indirectly furnishing him cost 7.50 marks 
a pound, which to him represented, not fifty-seven cents, 
but nearly two dollars. The net result of this drop in 

126 



THE HEART OF THE HUNGRY EMPIRE 

mark value was that the popiilace was several degrees 
nearer indigence. Those who could spend money freely 
were of three classes — foreigners, war profiteers, and those 
who derived their nourishment, directly or indirectly, 
at the public teat. Not, of course, that even those spent 
real money. There was not a penny of real money in 
circulation in all Germany. Gold, silver, and copper had 
all long since gone the way of other genuine articles in war- 
time Germany, and in their place had come Ersatz money. 
Pewter coins did service in the smallest denominations; 
from a half -mark upward there were only "shin-plasters" 
of varying degrees of raggedness, the smaller bills a constant 
annoyance because, like most of the pewter coins, they were 
of value only in the vicinity of the municipality or chamber 
of commerce that issued them. Even the larger notes of 
the Reichsbank were precarious holdings that required the 
constant vigilance of the owner, lest he wake up some morn- 
ing to find that they had been decreed into worthless paper. 
But I am getting far ahead of my story. Long before 
I began to peer beneath the surface of Berlin I had to face 
the problem of legalizing even my superficial existence there. 
On the very morning after my arrival I hastened to grim- 
soimding Wilhelmstrasse, uncertain whether my next move 
would be toward some dank underground dungeon or merely 
a swift return to the Dutch border. The awe-inspiring 
Foreign Office consisted of several adult school-boys and the 
bureaucrat-minded underlings of the old regime. A Rhodes 
scholar, who spoke English somewhat better than I, greeted 
my entrance with a formal heartiness, thanked me for 
adding my services to the growing band that was attempting 
to tell a long-deceived world the truth about Germany, and 
dictated an Ausweis which, in the name of the Foreign 
Office backed by all the authority of the new national 
government, gave me permission to go when and where I 
chose within the Empire, and forbade any one, large or 

127 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

small, to put any difficulties whatever in my way. Like 
a sea monster killed at the body, but with its tentacles 
still full of their poisoning black fluid, Wilhelmstrasse 
seemed to have become innocuous at home long before its 
antennae, such as the dreadful Herr Maltzen at The Hague, 
had lost their sting. 

If it had been a great relief to see the eyes of passers-by 
fade inattentively away at sight of me in my civilian garb, 
after two years of being stared at in uniform, it was doubly 
pleasant to know that not even the minions of the law 
could now question my most erratic wandering to and fro 
within the Fatherland. With my blanket Ausweis I was 
not even required to report to the police upon my arrival 
in a new community, the Polizeiliche Anmeldung that is 
one of the banes of German existence. I was, of course, 
still expected to fill out the regulation blank at each 
hotel or lodging-house I occupied, but this was a far less 
troublesome formality than the almost daily quest for, 
and standing in line at, police stations would have been. 
These hotel forms were virtually uniform throughout the 
Empire. They demanded the following information of 
each prospective guest: Day of arrival; given and family 
name; single, married, or widowed; profession; day, 
month, year, town, county, and land of birth; legal resi- 
dence, with street and number; citizenship (in German the 
word is Staatsangehorigkeit, which sounds much more 
like "Property of what government?"); place of last stay, 
with full address ; proposed length of present stay ; whether 
or not the registering guest had ever been in that particular 
city or locality before; if so, when, why, and how long, and 
residence while there. But under the new democracy 
hotelkeepers had grown somewhat more easy-going than 
in years gone by, and their exactions in this respect never 
became burdensome. 

It was soon evident that the man in the street commonly 

128 



THE HEART OF THE HUNGRY EMPIRE 

took me for a German. In Berlin I was frequently appealed 
to for directions or local information, not to mention the 
requests for financial assistance. To my surprise, my 
hearers seldom showed evidence of detecting a foreign 
accent, particularly when I spoke with deliberate care. 
Even then I was usually considered a German from another 
province, sometimes a Dane, a Hollander, or a Scandina- 
vian. Now and again I assumed a pose out of mere curios- 
ity, and often "got away with it." "You are from " 

(the next town)? was a frequent query, with a tinge of 
doubt in the tone. "No, I am from Mechlenburg" — 
or some other distant comer of Germany, I sometimes 
answered; to which the response was most likely to be, 
"Ah yes, I noticed that in your speech." Now and again 
I let a self-complacent inquirer answer for me, as was 
the case with a know-it-all waiter in a Berlin dining-room, 
who proved his infallible ability to "size up" guests with the 
following cocksure assumptions, which he solemnly set 
down in his food-ticket register: "Sie sind Hollander, 
nicht?" "Jawohir "Kaufmannf' "Jawohl" "Aus 
Amsterdam? '' "Jawohl" "Unverheiratetf' "Jawohl," 
and so on to the end of the list. It is never good policy to 
peeve a man by showing him up in public. During my 
first few days in unoccupied Germany I fancied it the 
part of wisdom to at least passively disguise my nationality, 
but the notion soon proved ridiculous, and from then on, 
with only exceptions enough to test certain impressions, 
I went out of my way to announce my real citizenship 
among all classes and under all circumstances. 

You can learn much of a country by reading its "Want 
Ads." Thus the discovery that the most respectable 
newspaper of Rio de Janeiro runs scores of notices of "Fe- 
male Companion Wanted," or "Young Lady Desires Pro- 
tector," quickly orientates the moral viewpoint in Brazil. 
In Berlin under the armistice the last pages of the daily 

129 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

journals gave a more exact cross-section of local conditions 
than the more intentional news columns. ^ There were, of 
course, countless pleas for labor of any description, the 
majority by ex-soldiers. Then came offers to sell or ex- 
change all manner of wearing apparel, "A real silk 
HAT, still in good condition"; "A black suit of real peace- 
time cloth"; "A second-hand pair of boots or shoes, such a 
size, of REAL leather!" "Four dress shirts, no war 
WARES, will be exchanged for a working-man's blouse 
and jumper," was followed by the enticement (here, 
no doubt, was the trail of the war profiteer), "A pair of 
COWHIDE boots will be swapped for a Dachshund of 
established pedigree." Farther down were extraordinary 
opportunities to buy Leberwurst, Blutwurst, Jagdwurst, 
Bruhwurtchen, and a host of other appetizing garbage, 
without meat-tickets. But the most persistent advertisers 
were those bent on recouping their fortunes by marrying 
money. It is strange if any new war millionaire in Germany 
has not had his opportunity to link his family with that of 
some impoverished one of noble lineage. In a single page 
of the Berliner Tageblatt, which carries about one-tenth 
the type of the same space in our own metropolitan dailies, 
there were eighty-seven offers of marriage, some of them 
double or more, bringing the total up to at least one hundred. 
Many of them were efforts, often more pathetic than 
amusing, by small merchants or tradesmen, just returned 
from five years in uniform, to find mates who would be of 
real assistance in re-establishing their business. But a 
considerable number aroused amazement that the wares 
offered had not been snapped up long ago. I translate 
a few taken at random : 

MERCHANT, 38 years. Christian, bachelor, idealist, lover of nature 
and sports, fortune of 300,000 marks, wishes to meet a like-minded, 
agreeable young lady with corresponding wealth which is safely invested. 
Purpose: MARRIAGE. 

130 



THE HEART OF THE HUNGRY EMPIRE 

FACTORY OWNER, Ph.D., Evangelical, 31, i meter 75, fine appear- 
ance, reserve officer, sound, lover of sports, htamorous and musical, 
400,000 marks property, seeks a LIFE COMPANION of like gifts and 
property in safe investments. 

Intelligent GENTLEMAN, handsome, splendid appearance, blond, 
diligent and successful merchant, winning personality, Jewish, etc. . . . 

Will a BEAUTIFUL, prominent, artistic, musical, and property-loving 
woman in her best years make happy an old man (Mosaic) of wealth? 

This modest old fellow had many prototypes. Now and 
then a man, and the women always, were offered by third 
parties, at least ostensibly, half the insertions beginning, 
' * For my sister " ; " For my daughter " ; " For my beautiful 
niece of twenty-two"; "For my lovely sister-in-law"; and 
so on. Some looked like the opportunity of a lifetime: 

I seek for my house physician, aged 55, a secure existence with a good, 
motherly woman of from 30 to 50. . . . 

A neat little BLONDE of 19 with some property seeks gentleman 
(Jewish) for the purpose of later marriage. . . . 

For a BARONESS of 23, orphan, ^-MILLION property, later heiress 
of big real estate. . . . 

If the demands of my calling had not kept me so busy 
I should have looked into this splendid opportunity myself; 
or into the next one: 

"Daughter of a BIG MERCHANT, 22, ONE MILLION Prop- 
erty. . . . 

But, after all, come to think of it, what is a mere million 
marks nowadays? 

MERCHANT'S DAUGHTER, 24, tall and elegant appearance, only 
child of one of the first Jewish families ; 1 50,000 dowry, later large inheri- 
tances. . . . 
10 131 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

A young widow (Jewish), 28 years, without property, longs for another 
happy home. . . . 

Some did not care how much they spent on advertising. 
For instance: 

I SEEK FOR MY FRIEND, a free-thinking Jewess, elegant woman 
in the fifties, looking much younger, widow, owner of lucrative wholesale 
business, a suitable husband of like position. The lady is of beautiful 
figure, lovable temperament, highly cultvured, distinguished, worldly 
wise, and at the same time a good manager and diligent business woman. 
[This last detail was plainly a tautology, having already been stated in 
the ninth word of the paragraph,] The gentleman should be a merchant 
or a government official of high rank. Chief condition is good character, 
distinguished sentiments, affectionate disposition. No photographs, but 
oral interview solicited. Offers addressed, etc, . . . 

This last vacancy should have found many suitable 
candidates, if there was truth in the violently pink hand- 
bills that were handed out in the streets of Berlin during 
one of the "demonstrations" against the peace terms. 
For the sake of brevity I give only its high lights: 

END OF MILITARISM 
BEGINNING OF JEW RULE! 

Fifty months have we stood at the Front honorably and undefeated. 
Now we have returned home, ignominiously betrayed by deserters and 
mutineers! We hoped to find a free Germany, with a government of the 
people. What is offered us? 

A GOVERNMENT OF JEWS! 

The participation of the Jews in the fights at the Front was almost 
nil. Their participation in the new government has already reached 
80 per cent.! Yet the percentage of Jewish population in Germany is 
only ij^ per cent.! 

OPEN YOUR EYES! 

COMRADES, YOU KNOW THE BLOODSUCKERS! 
COMRADES, WHO WENT TO THE FRONT AS VOLUNTEERS? 

132 



THE HEART OF THE HUNGRY EMPIRE 

WHO SAT OUT THERE MOSTLY IN THE MUD? WE! 
WHO CROWDED INTO THE WAR SERVICES AT HOME? 

THE JEWS! 
WHO SAT COMFORTABLY AND SAFELY IN CANTEENS 

AND OFFICES? 
WHICH PHYSICIANS PROTECTED THEIR FELLOW -RACE 

FROM THE TRENCHES? 
WHO ALWAYS REPORTED US "FIT FOR DUTY" THOUGH 

WE WERE ALL SHOT TO PIECES? 

These are the people who rule us. [Here followed a long list of names 
and blanket accusations.] Even in the Soldiers' Councils the Jews have 
the big word! Four long years these people hiing back from the Front, 
yet on November 9th they had the courage, guns in hand, to tear away 
from us soldiers our cockades, our shoulder-straps, and our medals of 
honor! 

Comrades, we wish as a free people to decide for ourselves and be 
ruled by men of OUR race ! The National Assembly must bring into the 
government only men of OUR blood and OUR opinions! Our motto 
must be: 

GERMANY FOR GERMANS! 

German people, rend the chains of Jewry asimder! Away with them! 
We want neither Pogrom nor Biirgerkrieg! We want a free German peo- 
ple, ruled by free German men! We will not be the slaves of the Jews! 

ELECTORS 

Out of the Parties and Societies run by Jews! Elect no Jews! Elect 
also no baptized Jews! Elect also none of the so-called " conf essionless " 
Jews! Give your votes only to men of genuine German blood! 

DOWN WITH JEWRY! 

Though it is violating the chronological order of my tale, 
it may be as well to sum up at once the attitude of Berlin 
upon receipt of the peace terms. Four separate times 
during my stay in Germany I visited the capital, by com- 
binations of choice and necessity. On the day the terms 
of the proposed treaty were made public apathy seemed 
to be the chief characteristic of the populace. If one must 

133 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

base conclusions on visible indications, the masses were 
far less interested in the news from Versailles than in their 
individual struggles for existence. The talk one heard 
was not of treaty terms, but of food. Not more than a 
dozen at a time gathered before the windows of the Lokal 
Anzeiger on Unter den Linden. They read the bulletins 
deliberately, some shaking their heads, and strolled on 
about their business as if they had been Americans scanning 
the latest baseball scores, a trifle disappointed, perhaps, 
that the home team had not won. There was no resemblance 
whatever to the excited throngs of Teuton colonists who had 
surged about the war maps in Rio de Janeiro during August, 
1 9 14. One could not but wonder whether this apathy 
had reigned in Berlin at that date. Scenes of popular 
excitement and violence had been prophesied, but for two 
days I wandered the streets of the capital, mingling with 
every variety of group, questioning every class of inhabitant, 
without once hearing a violent word, A few individuals 
asserted that their opinion of America had been sadly 
shocked; one or two secretaries of Allied correspondents 
haughtily resigned their positions. But the afternoon tea 
at the Adlon showed the same gathering of sleek, well- 
dressed Germans of both sexes, by no means averse to 
genial chats with enemy guests in or out of uniform. There 
was no means of forming definite conclusions as to whether 
the nation had been stunned with the immensity of the 
tragedy that had befallen it or whether these taciturn 
beings had some secret cause for satisfaction hidden away 
in their labyrinthine minds. 

Later I was assured that many had stayed up all night, 
waiting for the first draft of the terms, Siidermann ex- 
plained the apparent apathy with, "We Germans are not 
like the French; we mourn in the privacy of our homes, 
but we do not show our sorrow in public," Certainly the 
Boche has none of the Frenchman's sense of the dramatic, 

134 




VENDER OF TURNIPS ON A BERLIN STREET CORNER 




THE MILKMAN IN A SMALL TOWN OF THE INTERIOR 



THE HEART OF THE HUNGRY EMPIRE 

nor his tendency to hysteria. An observer reported that 
the "epoch-making first meeting of the National Assembly 
at Weimar opened like the unfinished business of a butchers' 
lodge." Once, during my absence from the capital, there 
was a flurry of excitement, but nothing to cause me to 
regret my presence elsewhere. The "demonstration" 
against the Ally-housing Adlon proved upon my return 
to have been serious chiefly in the foreign press. At the 
most genuinely German restaurant the head waiter had on 
the same date informed an American woman that her guests 
would no longer be welcome if they came in Allied uniforms, 
and that English would not be spoken — then took her 
whispered order in that language behind a concealing 
palm. Dodgers were dropped from airplanes on the capi- 
tal one day, protesting against a half-dozen articles of the 
treaty, demanding the immediate return of German prison- 
ers, and ending with the query, "Shall noble Germans be 
judged by Serb murderers, Negro states, Japs, Chinese, 
Siamese? ..." Billboards blossomed out with highly col- 
ored maps showing the territory that was being "stolen" 
from the Empire. But the populace seemed to give little 
attention to these appeals. Ludendorff called the Allied 
correspondents together and broke the record for short 
interviews with, "If this is what they mean by Wilson's 
Fourteen Points, our enemies can go to hell." Up to date 
they have not fully complied with the general's proposal. 
Haughty Richard Strauss declined to waste words on his 
Allied fellow-guests at the Adlon. On May 9th several of 
the Berlin dailies admitted at last, "We are conquered." 
Had their staffs been more efficient they might have shared 
that news with their readers several months earlier. On 
the third Sunday in May, when the subject would long 
since have grown cold among less phlegmatic peoples, I 
attended a dozen meetings of protest against the peace terms 
in as many parts of the city. Nothing could have been 

^35 



THE HEART OF THE HUNGRY EMPIRE 

more ladylike, silent, orderly, and funereal, with the pos- 
sible exception of the processions that formed after the 
meetings were over and plodded noiselessly down the 
shaded length of Unter den Linden. 

In the first heat of despair a Trauerwoche, or week of 
mourning, was decreed throughout the Empire, with the 
cast-iron fist of dreaded Noske to enforce it, but the nation 
took it less seriously than its forcible language warranted: 

In the time between May loth and i6th, inclusive, must be postponed: 

All public theater and musical representations, plays and similar 
jovialities, so long as there is not in them a higher interest for art or 
for science, and unless they bear a serious character. Especially are 
forbidden: 

Representations in music-halls, cabarets, and circuses, musical and 
similar entertainments in inns and taverns. 

All joyful public dances {Tanzlustharkeiten), as well as social and 
private dance entertainments in public places or taverns. 

All dramatic representations and gaieties in the public streets, roads, 
squares, and other public places. 

Cinematographic entertainments which do not bear witness to the 
earnestness of the times; all horse-races and similar public sporting 
activities. 

Gambling clubs are to close, and to remain closed also after the i6th 
until further notice. 

There was no clause demanding that Germany fast or 
reduce her consumption of food to the minimum; she had 
long been showing that evidence of national sorrow without 
the necessity of a formal command. 



VII 

"give us food!" 

NOW then, having fortified ourselves for the ordeal, 
let us take a swift, running glance at the "food situa- 
tion" in Berlin. That we have escaped the subject thus 
far is little short of miraculous, for it is almost .impossible 
to spend an hour in the hungry capital without having 
that burning question come up in one form or another. 
The inhabitants of every class, particularly the well-to-do, 
talked food all the time, in and out of turn. No matter 
what topic one brought up, they were sure to drift back 
to that. Their best anecdotes were the stirring adventure 
of getting a pound of butter or ('Sh!) where they had found a 
half-pound of cocoa for sale. The women were always 
discussing some kind of Ersatz food, how it tasted or how 
nearly it comes to tasting, how to make it up in the least 
unappetizing manner, where (Now, keep this strictly to 
yourself!) one could get it for only a few times at a fair 
price. It is curious how one's thoughts persist in sticking 
to food when one hasn't enough of it. I soon found myself 
thinking of little else, and I am by no means a sybarite or 
an epicurean. Most of Germany was hungry, but Berlin 
was so in a superlative degree. No one seemed to escape 
comparative famine or to have strength of will enough to 
avoid discussion of the absorbing topic of the hour. When 
I called on Sudermann at his comfortable residence in the 
suburb of Grunewald he could not confine his thoughts to 
drama or literature, or even to the "atrocious" peace terms. 

137 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

for more than a sentence or two before he also drifted back 
to the subject of food — how hungry he had been for months ; 
how he had suffered from lack of proper nourishment during 
a recent convalescence; how he had been forced to resort 
to Schleichhandel to keep himself and his sick daughter alive. 
Loose-fitting clothing, thin, sallow faces, prominent cheek- 
bones, were the rule among Berliners ; the rosy complexions 
and the fine teeth of former days were conspicuous by their 
scarcity. The prevailing facial tint in the city was a 
grayish-yellow. "Why, how thin you are!" had become 
taboo in social circles. Old acquaintance meeting old friend 
was almost sure to find his collar grown too large for him. 
Old friend, perhaps, did not realize that sartorial change 
in his own appearance, his mirror pictured it so gradually, 
but he was quick to note a similar uncouthness in the garb 
of old acquaintance. In the schoolroom there were not 
red cheeks enough to make one pre-war pair, unless the face 
of a child recently returned from the country, shining like 
a new moon in a fog, trebled the pasty average. Every 
row included pitiful cases of arrested development, while 
watery eyes turned the solemn, listless gaze of premature 
old age on the visitor from every side. The newspapers of 
Berlin were full of complaints that pupils were still required 
to attend as many hours and otherwise strive to attain pre- 
war standards. It was ' ' undemocratic, ' ' protested many par- 
ents, for it gave the few children of those wealthy enough to 
indulge in Schleichhandel an unfair advantage over the under- 
fed youngsters of the masses. Even adults condoled with 
one another that their desire and ability to work had sunk 
to an incredibly low level. "Three hours in my office," 
moaned one contributor, "and my head is swirling so 
dizzily that I am forced to stretch out on my divan, dropping 
most pressing affairs. Yet before the war I worked twelve 
and fourteen hours a day at high pressure, and strode home 
laughing at the idea of fatigue." 

138 



"GIVE US FOOD!'* 

It was perfectly good form in Berlin for a man in evening 
dress to wrap up a crust of black bread and carry it away 
with him. Even in the best restaurants waiters in unim- 
peachable attire ate all the leavings — in the rare cases 
that there were any — on their way back to the kitchen. I 
have already mentioned the constant munching of wretched 
lunches by theater audiences. The pretense of a meal on 
the stage was sure to turn the most uproarious comedy 
into a tear-provoking melodrama. Playwrights avoided 
such scenes in recent works; managers were apt to "cut 
them out" vfhen offering the older classics. The Berliner 
suffered far more from the cold than in the bygone days of 
plenitude. Two or three raw spells during the month of 
May, which I scarcely felt myself, found thousands buttoned 
up in one and even two overcoats, and wrapped to their 
noses in mufflers. The newspapers were constantly pub- 
lishing "hunger sketches"; the jokesters found the pre- 
vailing theme an endless source of sad amusement. "There 
are many children of four who have never tasted butter," 
remarked oneparagrapher; "some hardly know what meat 
is; no one of that age has ever tasted real bread." A 
current joke ran: "How old is your sister?" "I don't 
know," replied the foil, "but she can still remember how 
bananas taste." A cartoonist showed a lean and hollow- 
eyed individual standing aghast before a friend whose 
waistcoat still bulged Hke a bay-window — where he found 
him in Berlin is a mystery — with the caption, "Mein lieher 
Karl, you must have been getting some of that famous 
American bacon!" Those food-supplies from America, so 
incessantly announced, were a constant source both of 
amusement and of wrath in Germany, not wholly without 
reason, as I shall show before I have done with this dis- 
tressing subject. 

There was a suggestion of the famine victims of India 
in many German faces, particularly among the poor of large 

139 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

cities and in factory districts. In a social stampede such 
as that surging through Germany for the past year or two 
those who get down under the hoofs of the herd are the 
chief sufferers. The poor, the sick, whether at home or in 
hospitals, the weak, the old, the less hardy women, and the 
little children showed the most definite evidence of the 
efficiency of the blockade and of the decrease in home pro- 
duction. On the streets, especially of the poorer districts, 
the majority of those one passed looked as if they ought 
to be in bed, though many a household included invalids 
never seen in public. Flocks of ragged, unsoaped, pasty- 
skinned children swarmed in the outskirts. Even such 
food as was to be had by those in moderate circumstances 
contained slight nourishment, next to none for weaklings 
and babies; while the most hardy found next morning 
that very little of it had been taken up by the body. Hasty 
visitors to Berlin, well supplied with funds, who spent a 
few days in the best hotels, often with the right to draw 
upon the American or Allied commissaries, or with supplies 
tucked away in their luggage, were wont to report upon their 
return that the hunger of Germany was "all propaganda." 
Those who lived the unfavored life of the masses, even 
for as short a time, seldom, if ever, confirmed this complacent 
verdict. There were, of course, gradations in want, from the 
semi-starvation of the masses to the comparative plenty 
of the well-to-do; but the only ones who could be said to 
show no signs whatever of under-nourishment were for- 
eigners, war profiteers, and those with a strangle-hold on the 
public purse. 

The scarcity of food was everywhere in evidence. Almost 
no appetizing things were displayed to the public gaze. 
The windows of food-dealers were either empty or filled with 
laborious falsehoods about the taste and efficacy of the 
Ersatz wares in them. Slot-machines no longer yielded 
a return for the dropping of a pewter coin. Street venders 

140 



"GIVE US FOOD!" 

of anything edible were almost never seen, except a rare 
hawker of turnips or asparagus — Spar gel, for some reason, 
seemed to be nearly plentiful — who needed not even raise 
their voices to dispose of their stock in record time. It 
was no use dropping in on one's friends, for even though 
the welcome were genuine, their larder was sure to be as 
scantily garnished as one's own. 

The distribution of such food as remained was carried 
on with the elaborate orderliness for which the German 
has long been noted. All Berlin bloomed with posters 
advising those entitled to them where they could get six 
ounces of marmalade on such a day, or four pounds of 
potatoes on another date. The newspapers gave up much 
of their space to the Lebensmittelkalender, or "food calendar," 
of Berlin, the capital being divided into hundreds of sections, 
or "commissions," for the purposes of distribution: 

Until Sunday, in the divisions of the 169, 170, 190, 205, and 207th Bread 
Commissions, 125 grams of cheese per head are being allowed. During 
the next week 50 grams of cooking fat for the coupon No. L4 of the new 
special card for foodstuffs from outside the Empire. A half-pound of 
foreign white flour, for those previously reporting, in the time between 
the 4th and the 7th of Jtme, 1919, on the coupon P5 of the new card. 

This week, as already stated, there will be given out a new source 
of nourishment as a substitute for meat. The main rations remain un- 
changed. In Bread Districts 116, 118, 119, 120, and 209 will be given 
out 125 grams of marmalade. On the CI and CII cards will be given a 
can of condensed milk every four days. Children bom between May 
I, 19 13, and May i, 191 7, receive a card for chocolate (though it is not 
guaranteed that they can find any for sale). On coupon E2 will be given 
125 grams of American pork products. 

As late as May the long-announced supplies of food from 
America had not put in an appearance in sufficient quanti- 
ties to make an appreciable increase in Germany's scanty 
ration. In the occupied region, where our army kept close 
tabs on the distribution and prices, and even assisted the 

141 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

municipalities, for the sake of keeping peace in the com- 
munity, American foodstuffs reached all classes of the popu- 
lation, with the exception of the " self -providing " peasants. 
But "over in Germany" only tantalizing samples of what 
might come later were to be had at the time of my visit. 
This may have been the fault of the Boche himself, though 
he laid it to the enmity of the Allies, whom he accused of 
purposely "keeping him starved," of dangling before his 
hungry nose glowing false promises until he had signed 
the Peace Treaty. The "Hoover crowd," demanding pay- 
ment in gold before turning over supplies to the authorities 
of unoccupied Germany, often had laden ships in port long 
before the Germans were prepared to pay for the cargo. 
Moreover, once financially satisfied, they bade the Teutons 
"take it away," and washed their hands of the matter. 
There were rumors that large quantities were illegally 
acquired by the influential. At any rate, the "American 
food products" publicly for sale or visibly in existence 
inside Germany were never sufficient, during my stay there, 
to drive famine from any door. Berlin and the larger cities 
issued a few ounces of them per week to those who arrived 
early; in the rest of the country they were as intangible as 
rumors of life in the world to come. 

The Brotcommissionen charged with the equal distribu- 
tion of such food as existed were chiefly run by school- 
teachers. Their laborious system of ledgers and "tickets" 
was typically German, on the whole well done, though now 
and then their boasted efficiency fell down. Seldom, how- 
ever, were such swarming mobs lined up before the places 
of distribution as in France — which implied a better man- 
agement behind the wicket. Each applicant carried a note- 
book in which an entry was made in an orderly but brief 
manner, and was soon on his way again, clutching his hand- 
ful of precious "tickets," 

My own case was a problem to the particular Bread 

142 





N 




^^' 'v^;-^%,^ 




'^ JB^I 






f^^ . . ^'-■' \^^f^~'^^ ' 


^--T.li^^'^'^ , "^i^'z ■' ■" "- 



A SPARTICIST SHELI, MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR A FEW GERMANS TO GET MEAT 

WITHOUT TICKETS 




THE APPALLING EMPTINESS OF THE MARKET-PLACES 



"GIVE US FOOD!" 

Commission of the ward I first inhabited in Berhn, to which 
I hastened as soon as Wilhelmstrasse had legahzed my 
existence within the country. But they were not only 
courteous to a superlative degree, in spite of — or, perhaps, 
because of — my nationality; they insisted on working out 
the problem, before which a Latin would probably have 
thrown up his hands in disgust or despair. There was no 
difficulty in supplying me with food-tickets during my stay 
in the capital, nor of transferring my right to eat to any 
other city in which I chose to make my residence. But 
what was to be done for a man who proposed to tramp 
across the country, without any fixed dwelling-place? Ap- 
parently the ration system of Germany had neglected to 
provide for such cases. A long conference of all members 
of the commission wrestled with the enigma, while the line 
of ticket-seekers behind me grew to an unprecedented 
length. A dozen solutions were suggested, only to be 
rejected as irregular or specifically verboten. But a plan 
was found at last that seemed free from flaws. Tickets of 
all kinds were issued to me at once for the ensuing week, 
then the foolscap sheet on which such issue would have 
been noted weekly, had I remained in the capital, was 
decorated with the words, in conspicuous blue pencil, 
"Dauernd aufReise" — "Always traveling." Provincial offi- 
cials might in some cases decline to honor it, but the com- 
mission was of the luianimous opinion that most of them 
would accept the document as a command from the central 
government. 

Some of the supplies to which the tickets entitled me must 
be purchased on the spot, in specified shops scattered 
about the neighboring streets. That was a matter of a few 
minutes, for the shopkeepers already had them wrapped 
in tiny packages of the allotted size. There was a half- 
pound of sugar, coqirse-grained, but nearly white; then a 
bar of sandy soap of the size of a walnut. My week's 

143 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

supply of butter I tucked easily into a safety-match box 
and ate with that day's lunch. Three coupons on an 
elaborate card entitled "American Foodstuffs" yielded 
four ounces of lard (in lieu of bacon), two ounces of what 
seemed to be tallow, and a half-pound of white flour. The 
price of the entire collection, being government controlled, 
was reasonable enough, especially in view of the foreign 
rate of exchange; a total of two mk. eighty, or less than the 
butter alone would have cost from "underground" dealers. 
Fortunately the meat, potato, and bread tickets were good 
anywhere, sparing me the necessity of carrying these sup- 
plies with me. In fact, Reisehrotmarken, or "travel bread- 
tickets," were legal tender throughout the Empire, and 
were not confined to any particular date or place. Those 
I had been furnished for a month to come, a whole 
sheath of them, totaling twenty -five hundred grams. That 
sounds, perhaps, like a lot of bread, but the fact is that 
each elaborately engraved fifty-gram coupon represented a 
thin slice of some black concoction of bran, turnip-meal, 
and perhaps sawdust which contained little more nourish- 
ment and was far less appetizing in appearance than the 
ticket itself. The potato-tickets were invaluable; without 
them one was either denied the chief substance of a Berlin 
meal or forced to pay a painful price for an illegal serving 
of it; with them one could obtain two hundred and fifty 
grams for a mere thirty pfennigs. Other vegetables, 
which were just then beginning to appear on bills of fare, 
were not subject to ticket regulation. 

The white flour left me with a problem equal to that I 
had been to the Brotcommissionen. Obviously I could not 
afford to waste such a luxury; quite as obviously I could 
not eat it raw. In the end I turned it over to the head 
waiter of my hotel, together with the lard, and breakfasted 
next morning on two long-enduring Pfannkuchen. But the 
go-between charged me a mark for his trouble, three marks 

144 



"GIVE US FOOD!" 

for two eggs, without which a German ' ' pancake " is a failure, 
and a mark for the cooking ! 

I drifted out to the central market of Berlin one after- 
noon and found it besieged by endless queues of famished 
people, not one of whom showed signs of having had any- 
thing fit to eat, nor a sufficient quantity of anything unfit, 
for months. Yet the only articles even of comparative 
abundance were heaps of beet-leaves. A few fish, a score 
or so of eels, and certain unsavory odds and ends, all "against 
tickets," were surrounded by clamoring throngs which only 
the miracle of the loaves and fishes could have fed even 
for a day with the quantity on hand. Only the flower- 
market showed a supply by any means in keeping with the 
demand, and that only because various experiments had 
proved flowers of no edible value. The emptiness of these 
great market-places, often of ambitious architecture and 
fitted with every modem convenience — except food — the 
silence of her vast slaughter-house pens, and the idleness 
of her sometimes immense, up-to-date kitchens, make the 
genuine hunger of Germany most forcibly apparent. 

The efforts of the masses to keep from being crowded 
over the brink into starvation had given Berlin new customs. 
Underfed mobs besieged the trains in their attempts to get 
far enough out into the country to pick up a few vegetables 
among the peasants. Each evening the elevated, the under- 
ground, and the suburban trains were packed with gaunt, 
toil-worn men, women, and children, the last two classes in 
the majority, returning from more or less successful foraging 
expeditions, on fourth-class tickets, to the surrounding 
farms and hamlets; the streets carried until late at night 
emaciated beings shuffling homeward, bowed double under 
sacks of potatoes or turnips. Then there were the Lauben- 
gdrten, or "arbor gardens," that had grown up within the 
past few years. The outer edges of Berlin and of all the 
larger cities of Germany were crowded with these "arbor 

145 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

colonists," living in thousands of tiny wooden shacks, usu- 
ally unpainted, often built of odds and ends of lumber, of 
drygoods-boxes, of tin cans, like those of the negro laborers 
along the Panama Canal during its digging. About Berlin 
the soil is sandy and gives slight reward for the toil of 
husbandry, yet not an acre escaped attempted cultivation. 
In most cases a "general farmer" leased a large tract of 
land and parceled it out in tiny plots, hiring a carpenter 
to build the huts and an experienced gardener to furnish 
vegetarian information to the city -bred "colonists." Here 
the laborer or the clerk turned husbandman after his day's 
work in town was done, and got at least air and exercise, 
even though he made no appreciable gain in his incessant 
struggle for food. Here, too, he might have a goat, "the 
poor man's cow," to keep him reminded of the taste of milk, 
and perhaps a pig for his winter's meat-supply. 

The great shortage in animal flesh and fats had made the 
German of the urban rank and file a vegetarian by force. 
Theoretically every one got the allotted one hundred and 
twenty-five grams of meat a week; practically many could 
not even pay for that, and even if they had been able to 
it would scarcely have ranked them among the carnivorous 
species. The rich, of course, whether in hotels or private 
residences, got more than the legal amount, and of a some- 
what higher quality, but they paid fabulous prices for it, 
and they could not but realize that they were cheating 
their less fortunate fellow-countrymen when they ate it. 
The war had not merely reduced Germany's cattle numeri- 
cally; the lack of fodder had made the animals scarcely 
fit for butchering. They weighed, perhaps, one half what 
they did in time of peace, and the meat was fiberless and 
imnourishing as so much dogfish. The best steak I ever 
tasted in Berlin would have brought a growl of wrath from 
the habitue of a Bowery "joint." The passing of a gaunt 
Schlachtkuh down a city street toward the slaughter-house 

146 



"GIVE US FOOD!" 

was sure to bring an excited crowd of inhabitants in its wake. 
To bread and potatoes had fallen the task of keeping the 
mass of the people alive, and the latter were usually, the 
former always, of low quality 

The resultant gnawings of perpetual hunger had brought 
to light a myriad of Ersatz foods that were in reality no 
food at all. It was frequently asserted that this consump- 
tion of unwholesome imitations of food was responsible 
for the erratic conduct of many a present-day German, 
manifesting itself now in morose, now in talkative moods, 
often in more serious deviations from his moral character. 
Certainly it had made him less pugnacious. Indirectly 
it had made him more of a liar — at least on his bills of fare. 
The best hotel in Berlin made no bones of shredding turnips 
or beet-roots and serving them as mashed potatoes. Once 
in a while an honest waiter warned the unsuspecting client, 
as was the case with one who shattered my fond hopes of 
an appetizing dish announced on the menu-card he had 
handed me. "Venison your grandmother!" he whispered, 
hoarsely. "It is horse-meat soaked in vinegar. Take the 
beef, for at least that is genuine, poor as it is." Milk, butter, 
and all such "trimmings" as olives, pickles, sauces, pre- 
serves, and the like were wholly unknown in public eating- 
places. Pepper I saw but once in all Germany — as a special 
l\ixury in a private household. Coffee might now and then 
be had, but an imitation of burnt corn and similar ingredi- 
ents took its place in an overwhelming majority of cases, 
and cost several times what real coffee did before the war. 
Beechnut oil, supplied only to those holding tickets, did 
the duty of butter and lard in cooking processes. The 
richest and most influential could not get more than their 
scanty share of the atrocious, indigestible stuff miscalled 
bread. Bakers, naturally, were mighty independent. But 
those who could get bread often got cake, for there was 
always more or less "underground" traffic in forbidden 
11 147 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

delicacies. One of the most difficult tasks of all was to 
lay in a lunch for a journey. Before my first trip out of the 
capital I tramped the streets for more than an hour in quest 
of something edible to carry along with me, and finally paid 
six marks for an egg-and-sausage sandwich that went easily 
into a vest pocket. 

Good linen had almost wholly disappeared — at least from 
sight. It was never seen on dining-tables, having long 
since been commandeered by the government for the making 
of bandages — or successfully hidden. Paper napkins and 
tablecloths were the invariable rule even in the most expen- 
sive establishments. Personal linen was said to be in a sad 
state among rich and poor alike; the Ersatz soap or soap- 
powders reduced it quickly to the consistency and dura- 
bility of tissue-paper. Many of the proudest families had 
laid away their best small-clothes, hoping for the return of 
less destructive wash-days. As to soap for toilet purposes, 
among German residents it was little more than a memory; 
such as still existed had absolutely no fat in it, and was made 
almost wholly of sand. Foreigners lucky or foresighted 
enough to have brought a supply with them might win the 
good will of those with whom they came in contact far more 
easily than by the distribution of mere money. 

But we are getting off the all-absorbing topic of food. 
If the reader feels he can endure it, I wish to take him to a 
half-dozen meals in Berlin, where he may see and taste 
for himself. The first one is in a public soup-kitchen, where 
it will be wiser just to look on, or at most to pretend to eat. 
Long lines of pitiful beings, women and children predomi- 
nating, file by the faintly steaming kettles, each carrying 
a small receptacle into which the attendants toss a ladleful 
of colored water, sometimes with a piece of turnip or some 
still more plebeian root in it. The needy were lucky to 
get one such "hot meal" a day; the rest of the time they 
consumed the dregs of the markets or things which were fed 

148 



"GIVE US FOOD!" 

only to hogs before the war. The school lunch and often 
the supper of perhaps the majority of the children of Berlin 
consisted of a thin but heavy slice of war-bread lightly 
smeared with a colic-provoking imitation of jam. In con- 
trast, one might stroll into the Adlon in the late afternoon 
and see plump and prosperous war profiteers — "Jews" the 
Berliners called them, though they were by no means con- 
fined to a single race — taking their plentiful "tea" in the 
midst of, and often in company with. Allied officers. 

My own first German meal — for those in the occupied 
region were rather meals in Germany — was a "breakfast" 
in a second-class hotel, of the kind with which almost every 
one began the day in the Fatherland. There was set before 
me with great formality a cupful of liikewarm water with 
something in it which made a faint effort to pretend it was 
coffee, a very thin slice of war-bread, yielded only after long 
argimient because I had as yet no bread-tickets, and a 
spoonful of a sickly looking purple mess that masqueraded 
under the name of "marmalade." Where the Germans got 
their comparative abundance of this last stuff I do not know. 
Its appearance suggested that it was made of bruised flesh ; 
its taste reminded one of rotten apples. The bill on this oc- 
casion was three marks, plus lo per cent, for service. Begin 
a few days on that and see how much "pep" you have left; 
by noon you will know the full meaning of the word hungry. 

I took lunch that day in a working-man's restaurant. 
There I got a filling, though not a very lasting, dinner of 
beans and potatoes, a "German beefsteak" — resembling 
our "Hamburger," but possibly made of horse-meat — a 
slice of what Europe calls bacon, which is really salt pork, 
and two mugs of weak beer — total, four mk. forty. No 
bread was asked or given. The clients ranged from small 
merchants to hackmen. 

For supper I investigated a long-established vegetarian 
restaurant on Friedrichstrasse. An oat soup was followed 

149 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

by a plate of mashed peas, one storage egg (two marks), 
a cold potato salad, a pint of "white beer," and a pudding 
that would have been tasteless but for its Himbeer sauce, 
sickly as hair-oil. The check came to seven mk. seventy- 
five, including the usual tip. 

A few blocks farther on along this same chief cross-artery 
of Berlin is a famous "Tunnel" restaurant below the level 
of the sidewalk. If you have been in the German capital 
during this century you have no doubt passed it, though 
you probably took care not to enter. In 191 9 it was one of 
the chief rendezvous of lost souls. Girls of sixteen, already 
pass^es, mingled with women of once refined instincts 
whom the war had driven to the streets. Their male com- 
panions were chiefly "tough characters," some of them still 
in uniform, who might give you a half -insolent, half -friendly 
greeting as you entered, but who displayed little of that 
rowdyism so characteristic of their class in our own country. 
Here no attention was paid to meatless days, and, though 
the date was plainly written on the bill of fare, it offered, 
even on Tuesdays and Fridays, several species of beef and 
veal and many kinds of game — wild duck, marsh fowl, 
rabbit, mountain goat, and so on, all evidently the real 
article. The servings were more than generous, the potatoes 
almost too plentiful. The menu asserted that "Meat, 
bread, and potatoes were served only against tickets," but 
for the payment of an extra twenty-five pfennigs the lack 
of these was overlooked, except in the case of bread. A 
small glass of some sickly-sweetish stuff called beer cost the 
same amount; in the more reputable establishments of the 
capital the average price for a beverage little better was 
about four times that. Five marks sufficed to settle the 
bill, after the most nearly satisfying meal I had so far found 
in Berlin. Here 15 per cent, was reckoned in for service. 
Evidently the waiters had scorned a mere 10 per cent, in so 
low-priced a resort. 

ISO 




THE GOTHIC THATCHED ROOFS OF MECHLENBURG 




THE "hands" WHO TOILED IN THE MARKET-GARDEN WERE NOT NOTED FOR 
THEIR STRENGTH OR YOUTH 



"GIVE US FOOD!" 

While I ate, an old woman wandered in, peddling some 
sort of useless trinkets. She was chalky in color and 
emaciated to the last degree, staggering along under her 
basket as if it had been an iron chest. Several of the 
habitues got rid of her with a pewter coin. I happened to 
have no change and gave her instead a few bread-tickets. 
The result was not exactly what I had expected. So great 
was her gratitude for so extraordinary a gift, beside which 
mere money seemed of little or no interest, that she huddled 
over my table all the rest of the evening. Before the war 
she had been the wife of a shopkeeper in Charlottenburg. 
Her husband and both her sons had died in France. Busi- 
ness had dwindled away for lack of both demand and sup- 
ply until she had been dispossessed, and for nearly two years 
she had been wandering the night streets of Berlin with 
her basket. Her story was that of thousands in the larger 
cities of Germany. 

"No, I am not exactly sick," she explained, after all but 
toppling over upon me, "but my heart is so weak that it 
gives way when I try to work. I faint in the street every 
few hours and know nothing about it until I find myself in 
some shop door or alleyway where passers-by have carried 
me. The back of my head and my neck have ached for 
more than a year now, all the time, from the chin clear 
around. It is lack of food. I know where I could get plenty 
of meat, if I could pay for it and spend six or seven marks 
for a coach to get there." 

"But you get American bacon now, don't you?" I put in, 
more out of curiosity to know how she would answer than 
to get information. 

"Bacon!" she coughed. "Yes, indeed, one slice every 
two weeks! Enough to grease my tongue, if it needed it." 

A moment later I chanced to mention Holland. She 
broke off a mumbling account of the horrors of war suffering 
at home with: 

151 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

"Holland! Isn't that where our Kaiser is? Do you 
think our wicked enemies will do something wrong to his 
Majesty ? Ah me, if only he would come back ! " 

Like all her class, she was full of apologies for the deposed 
ruler and longed to bask once more in the blaze of his former 
glory, however far she was personally removed from it. 
Nor had her sufferings dimmed her patriotism. An evil- 
faced fellow at a neighboring table spat a stream of his 
alleged beer on the floor and shouted above the hubbub 
of maudlin voices: "Ein Hundeleben ist das in Deutschland! 
A dog's life ! Mine for a better country as quick as possible. ' ' 

"Rats always desert a sinking ship," snapped the old 
woman, glaring at the speaker with a display of her two 
yellow fangs, "no matter how well they have once fared 
upon it." 

The fifth meal to which the reader is invited was one 
corresponding to our "business man's lunch." The clients 
were wholesale merchants, brokers, lawyers, and the like. 
In its furnishings the place was rather sumptuous, but as 
much cannot be said of its food. My own luncheon con- 
sisted of a turnip soup, roast veal (a mere shaving of it, 
as tasteless as deteriorated rubber), with one potato, a "Ger- 
man beefsteak," some inedible mystery dubbed "lemon 
pudding," and a small bottle of water — beer was no longer 
served in this establishment. The bill, including the cus- 
tomary forced tip, was nineteen mk. eighty, and the scornful 
attitude of the waiter proved that it was considerably less 
than the average. Even here the majority of the dishes 
were some species of Ersatz, and the meat itself was so under- 
nourished that it had virtually no nourishment to pass on. 
Of ten pounds of it, according to the wholesale butcher 
who sat opposite me, at least five disappeared in the cooking. 
Finish such a meal at one and you were sure to be ragingly 
hungry by three. Yet there was less evidence of "profiteer- 
ing" in establishments of this kind in Berlin than I had 

152 



''GIVE US FOOD!" 

expected. The ice-cold bottle of mineral water, for instance, 
cost forty-five pfennigs, a mere four cents to foreigners. 
The German does not seem to go over his entire stock 
daily and mark it higher in price irrespective of its cost to 
him, as in Paris and, I fear, in our own beloved land. 

But there was one restaurant in Berlin where a real meal, 
quite free from Ersatz, could still be had, by those who could 
pay for it — the famous Borchardt's in Franzosischerstrasse. 
Situated in the heart of the capital, in the very shadow of the 
government that issues those stern decrees against "under- 
ground" traffic in foodstuffs, it was protected by the rich 
and influential, and by the same government officials whose 
legal duty it was to suppress it. Admittance was only by 
personal introduction, as to a gambling club. The only 
laws this establishment obeyed were in the serving of bread 
and the use of paper in place of table linen. Meatless days 
meant nothing to its chefs; many articles specifically for- 
bidden in restaurants were openly served to its fortunate 
guests. It depended, of course, entirely on Schleichhandel 
for its supplies. Among the clients, on the evening in ques- 
tion, were generals out of uniform, a noted dealer in muni- 
tions, a manufacturer of army cloth, several high govern- 
ment officials, two or three Allied correspondents, and 
Bemsdorff's right-hand "man" in several of his American 
trickeries — in a silky green gown that added to the snaky 
effect of her serpent-like eyes. It was she who "fixed" so 
thoroughly the proposed attack on us from Mexico during 
the early days of 191 7. 

Four of us dined together, and this is a translation of the 
bill: 

Cover Uablecloth and napkins, or paper). . . . 2.50 Marks 

Two bottles of Yquem 90. 

Wine tax on same 18. 

Half -bottle Lafanta (ordinary wine) 13 -So 

Tax on same 2.60 

Hors-d'oeuvre (radishes, foie gras, etc.) .... 150. 

153 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

Roast veal (very ordinary) 80. Marks 

Potatoes (cost, i mark in the market) 12.50 

Asparagus (plentiful in Berlin) 54. 

Charlotte (a tasteless dessert) 20. 

Ice 6. 

Bread (one very thin slice each — black) .60 

Cigars (three horrible cabbages) , 18. 

Butter 4- 

471.20 
10 per cent, for service 47-iS 

Total S18.35 

Thankfully received, May 8, 19 19 

Fritz Reich. 

At that day's rate of exchange this amounted to some- 
thing over forty doUars; at the pre-war rate, which was 
still in force so far as the German clients were concerned, 
it was about one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Small 
wonder the clientele was "select" and limited. 

Before we end this round of restaurants let us settle with 
the waiters. About the time of the revolution the majority 
of them refused to have their income any longer subject 
to the whims of clients, a movement which had spread 
through all the larger cities of unoccupied Germany. In 
most eating-places a charge of "10 per cent, for service" 
was now added to the bill; in a few cases it ran as high as 
25 per cent. How soon they will be demanding 100 per cent, 
is a question I cannot answer. There were suggestions 
that before long they will expect to get free-will tips in addi- 
tion to the forced contribution, especially after the first 
flock of American tourists descends upon the Fatherland. 
In many hotels the bills were stamped "10 per cent, added" 
so faintly that the unsuspecting new-comer was often over- 
generous by mistake. At some establishments the waiter 
was required to inform the guest that the service fee had 

154 



"GIVE US FOOD!" 

been included, but the majority labored under no such com- 
pulsion, and those who did frequently whispered the informa- 
tion so hurriedly that only ears sharpened by financial 
worries could catch it. Another favorite trick was to find 
it so difficult to make change that the busy client finally 
stalked out without it. The advantages to the customer 
of this system were dubious; the waiters, on the whole, 
seem to like the new arrangement. "We may not get any 
more," I was assured in a wide variety of cases, "or even 
as much; but at least we know what we are getting." Some 
of the clan seemed to do their best, in their quiet, phlegmatic 
way; others took full advantage of the fact that, like phy- 
sicians, they got their fees, anyway, no matter how poor the 
service. As is the tendency among the laboring class the 
world over, the fellows were inclined greatly to overrate 
their importance in these new days of "democracy." For- 
merly they were quite content to be addressed as "Kellner," 
and their chief answered with alacrity to the call of "Ober 
Kellner." To-day the wise diner summons the most hiunble 
of the serving personnel with a respectful, gently modulated 
"Herr Ober." 

The question of Schleichhandel, or food trickery, had 
grown disturbing all over Germany, particularly so in Berlin. 
It is undeniable that those with plenty of money could still 
get enough to eat, irrespective both of the law and of the 
general supply, though by so doing they abetted profiteering, 
hoarding, smuggling, and several other species of rascality. 
Perhaps it was not worth while for the government to 
expend its energies in combating the illegal traffic in food- 
stuffs, which, compared with the whole problem, was a minor 
matter and might involve a struggle with the most influential 
citizens. More likely the higher officials feared that an 
honest inquiry would disclose their own bedraggled skirts. 
The newspapers of the capital teemed with such paragraphs 
as the following : 

155 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

SCHLEICHHANDEL WITH POTATOES 

In the past two months not only has underhand dealing become far 
more prevalent, but the prices of articles affected by it have greatly 
increased. We now have the common circumstance that wares in no 
way to be had legally are offered openly for sale in Schleichhandel, so 
that the expression "Schleich" (slippery, underground) is no longer true. 
For instance, every one knows to-day the price of butter in Schleichhandel, 
but very few know the official price. The government has sent out the 
following notice : 

"The Schleichhandel in potatoes has taken on an impulse that makes 
the fvimishing of the absolutely necessary potatoes, officially, very seri- 
ously threatened. From many communities, especially in the neigh- 
borhood of large cities, thousands of hundredweight of potatoes are car- 
ried away daily by 'hamsterers.' At present the authorities are chiefly 
contenting themselves with confiscating the improperly purchased 
wares, without taking action against the improper purchasers. A better- 
ing of the situation can only be hoped for through a sharper enforcement 
of the laws and decrees concerning food. The potato-protective law of 
July i8, 1918, calls for a pvmishment of a year's imprisonment and 10,000 
marks fine, or both. For all illegal carrying off of food — and in this, 
of course, all Schleichhandel is included— the fine must equal twenty 
times the value of the articles." 

Yet for all these threats Borchardt's and similar estab- 
lishments went serenely on, often feeding, in all probability, 
the very men who issued these notices. 

Of ordinary thievery Germany also had her full share. 
Every better-class hotel within the Empire displayed the 
following placard in a prominent position in all rooms: 

The honorable guests are warned, on account of the constantly increas- 
ing thefts of clothing and footwear, not to leave these articles outside 
the room, as was formerly the custom, for cleaning, but to hand them 
over personally for that purpose directly to the employees charged with 
that service, since otherwise the hotel declines any responsibility for 
the loss of such articles. 

Verein of Hotel Owners. 

As to foodstuffs, thefts were constant and attended with 
every species of trickery, some of them typically German in 

156 



"GIVE US FOOD!" 

their complications. Thieves and smugglers on the large 
scale were particularly fond of using the waterways about 
the capital. One night the boat-watch on the Spree detected 
a vessel loaded with fifty hundredweight of sugar slipping 
along in the shadow of the shore. The two brothers on 
board, a waiter and a druggist, announced that they had 
bought their cargo from a ship, and had paid five thousand 
marks for it, but they were unable to explain how the ship 
had reached Berlin. They planned to dispose of the sugar 
privately, "because it would cause fewer complications." 
A few days later the papers announced : 

The police of Berlin report that not only native foodstuffs, but our 
foreign imports, are being stolen. American flour disappears in startling 
quantities. Many arrests of drivers and their helpers show where much 
of it goes. It is stolen, and later most of it comes into Schleichhandel. 
The drivers who take the flour from the boats to the bakers are too 
seldom given a guardsman, and even when they are they flnd friends 
to act as such and help them in the stealing. Even in the finest weather 
the driver puts a tarpaulin over the load, and his accomplice hides him- 
self under it. There he fills an empty bag he has brought along by 
pawing a few handfuls out of each sack of floiur and sewing them up 
again. Then he slips into some tavern along the way. The nvunber of 
sacks remains the same, and as our bakers are not familiar with the full- 
ness of American flour sacks, hundred of himdredweight of flour are lost 
this way daily. In spite of many arrests the stealing continues. 

The wildest rumors on the subject of food were current 
in Berlin. One of the yellow sheets of the capital, for in- 
stance, appeared one evening with the blatant head-line, 
"Goat Sausage of Child Flesh!" asserting that many 
Berliners were unconsciously indulging in cannibalism. 
"Where," shrieked the frenzied article, "are those one 
hundred and sixty -five children who have disappeared from 
their homes in Berlin during the past month, and of whom 
the police have found no trace? Ask the sausage-makers 
of one of our worst sections of town, or taste more carefully 

157 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

the next 'goat sausage' you buy so cheaply in some of our 
less reputable shops and restaurants ..." To my astonish- 
ment, I found no small number of the populace taking this 
tale seriously. 

I have it from several officers of the American shipping 
board that affairs were still worse along the Kiel Canal 
and in the northern ports than in Berlin. At Emden, where 
there were even "vinegar tickets," and along the canal 
the inhabitants were ready to sell anything, particularly 
nautical instruments, for which Germany has now so little 
use, for food — though not for money. Even the seagulls 
were said to abandon their other activities to follow the 
American flag when a food-ship came into port. Stevedores 
sent down into the hold broke open the boxes and ate flour 
and lard by the handful, washing it down with condensed 
milk. If German guards were placed over them, the only 
difference was that the guards ate and drank also. Set 
American sentries over them and the stevedores would strike 
and possibly shoot. What remained under the circum- 
stances but to let them battle with their share of the national 
hunger in their own indigestible manner? 



VIII 

FAMILY LIFE IN MECKLENBURG 

TWO or three days after my arrival in Berlin I might 
have been detected one morning in the act of stepping 
out of a wabbly-kneed Droschke at the Stettiner Bahnhof 
soon after sunrise. In the northernmost corner of the 
Empire there lived — or had lived, at least, before the war — 
a family distantly related to my own. I had paid them a 
hurried visit ten years before. Now I proposed to renew 
the acquaintance, not only for personal reasons, but out of 
selfish professional motives. The exact degree of war 
suffering would be more easily measured in familiar scenes 
and faces; moreover, the German point of view would be 
laid before me frankly, without any mask of "propaganda" 
or suspicion. 

Memories of France had suggested the possible wisdom 
of reaching the station well before train-time. I might, 
to be sure, have purchased my ticket in leisurely comfort 
at the Adlon, but for once I proposed to take pot-luck with 
the rank and file. First-hand information is always much 
more satisfactory than hearsay or the dilettante observa- 
tion of the mere spectator — once the bruises of the experience 
have disappeared. The first glimpse of the station interior 
all but wrecked my resolution. Early as I was, there were 
already several hundred would-be travelers before me. 
From both ticket-windows lines four deep of disheveled 
Germans of both sexes and all ages curved away into the 

159 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

farther ends of the station wings. Boy soldiers with fixed 
bayonets paraded the edges of the columns, attempting 
languidly and not always successfully to prevent selfish 
new-comers from "butting in " out of their turn. I attached 
myself to the end of the queue that seemed by a few inches 
the shorter. In less than a minute I was jammed into a 
throng that quickly stretched in S-shape back into the 
central hall of the station. 

We moved steadily but almost imperceptibly forward, 
shuffling our feet an inch at a time. The majority of my 
companions in discomfort were plainly city people of the 
poorer classes, bound short distances into the country on 
foraging expeditions. They bore every species of receptacle 
in which to carry away their possible spoils — ^hand-bags, 
hampers, baskets, grain-sacks, knapsacks, even buckets 
and toy wagons. In most cases there were two or three of 
these to the person, and as no one dreamed of risking the 
precious things out of his own possession, the struggle for- 
ward suggested the writhing of a miscellaneous scrap-heap. 
Women were in the majority — sallow, bony-faced creatures 
in patched and faded garments that hung about their ema- 
ciated forms as from hat-racks. The men were little less 
miserable of aspect, their deep-sunk, watery eyes testifying 
to long malnutrition; the children who now and then 
shrilled protests at being trodden underfoot were gaunt and 
colorless as corpses. Not that healthy individuals were 
lacking, but they were just that — individuals, in a throng 
which as a whole was patently weak and anemic. The 
evidence of the scarcity of soap was all but overpowering. 
Seven women and at least three children either fainted or 
toppled over from fatigue during the two hours in which 
we moved a few yards forward, and they were buffeted 
out of the line with what seemed to be the malicious joy 
of their competitors behind. I found my own head swim- 
ming long before I had succeeded in turning the comer 

1 60 



FAMILY LIFE IN MECKLENBURG 

that cut off our view of the pandemonium at the ticket- 
window. 

At eight- thirty this was suddenly closed, amid weak- 
voiced shrieks of protest from the struggling column. The 
train did not leave until nine, but it was already packed to 
the doors. Soldiers, and civilians with military papers, 
were served at a supplementary window up to the last 
minute before the departure. The disappointed throng 
attempted to storm this wicket, only to be driven back at 
the point of bayonets, and at length formed in column again 
to await the reopening of the public guichets at noon. 

The conversation during that three-hour delay was inces- 
santly on the subject of food. Some of it was good-natured; 
the overwhelming majority harped on it in a dreary, hope- 
less grumble. Many of the women, it turned out, were 
there to buy tickets for their husbands, who were still at 
work. Some had spent the previous day there in vain. I 
attempted to ease my wearying legs by sitting on my ham- 
per, but querulous protests assailed me from the rear. The 
gloomy seekers after food seemed to resent every inch that 
separated them from their goal, even when this was tem- 
porarily unattainable. One would have supposed that the 
order-loving Germans might have arranged some system of 
numbered checks that would spare such multitudes the 
necessity of squandering the day at unproductive waiting 
in line, but the railway authorities seemed to be overwhelmed 
by the "crisis of transportation." 

From noon until one the struggle raged with double fury. 
The boy soldiers asserted their authority in vain. A mere 
bayonet-prick in the leg was apparently nothing compared 
with the gnawing of continual hunger. Individual fights 
developed and often threatened to become general. Those 
who got tickets could not escape from the crushing maelstrom 
behind them. Women were dragged unconscious from the 
fray, often feet first, their skirts about their heads. The 

i6i 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

rear of the column formed a flying wedge and precipitated 
a free-for-all fracas that swirled vainly about the window. 
When this closed again I was still ten feet away. I con- 
cluded that I had my fill of pot-luck, and, buffeting my 
way to the outer air, purchased a ticket for the following 
morning at the Adlon. 

A little episode at my departure suggested that the ever- 
obedient German of Kaiser days was changing in character. 
The second-class coach was already filled when I entered it, 
except that at one end there was an empty compartment, 
on the windows of which had been pasted the word "Be- 
stellt." In the olden days the mere announcement that it 
was "engaged" would have protected it as easily as bolts 
and bars. I decided to test the new democracy. Crowding 
my way past a dozen men standing obediently in the corri- 
dor, I entered the forbidden compartment and sat down. 
In a minute or two a seatless passenger put his head in at 
the door and inquired with humble courtesy whether it was 
I who had engaged the section. I shook my head, and a 
moment later he was seated beside me. Others followed, 
until the compartment was crowded with passengers and 
baggage. One of my companions angrily tore the pasters 
from the windows and tossed them outside. 

"Bestellt indeed!" he cried, sneeringly. "Perhaps by the 
Soldiers' Council, eh? I thought we had done away with 
those old f avoritisms ! " 

A few minutes later a station porter, in his major's uni- 
form, appeared at the door with his arms full of baggage 
and followed by two pompous-looking men in silk hats. 
At sight of the throng inside he began to bellow in the 
familiar old before-the-war style. 

"This compartment is hestellt," he vociferated, in a crown- 
princely voice, "and it remains bestellt! You will all get 
out of there at once!" 

No one moved; on the other hand, no one answered back. 

162 




THE SCHWERIN CASTLE IS PERHAPS THE MOST IMPOSING IN GERMANY 




A TOBACCO LINE IN A GERMAN CITY. THE WOMEN CAME TO GET ERSATZ CIGA- 
RETTES FOR THEIR HUSBANDS AT WORK 



FAMILY LIFE IN MECKLENBURG 

The porter fumed a bit, led his charges farther down the 
train, and perhaps found them another compartment; at 
any rate, he never returned. "Democracy" had won. 
Yet through it all I could not shake off the feeling that 
if any one with a genuinely bold, commanding manner, 
an old army officer, for instance, decorated with all the 
thingamabobs of his rank, had ordered the compartment 
vacated, the occupants would have filed out of it as silently 
and meekly as lambs. 

The minority still ruled in more ways than one. A placard 
on the wall, forbidding the opening of a window without 
the unanimous consent of the passengers within the com- 
partment, was strictly obeyed. The curtains had long 
since disappeared, as had the leather straps with which one 
raised or lowered the sash, which must now be manipulated 
by hand. As in the occupied zone, the seats had been 
stripped of their velvety coverings, suggesting that this 
had been no special affront to the Allies, but merely a sign 
of the scarcity of cloth for ladies' blouses. It was a cloudless 
Sunday, and railway employees along the way were taking 
advantage of it to work in their little vegetable gardens, 
tucked into every available corner. They did not neglect 
their official duties, however, for all that. At every grade 
crossing the uniformed guard stood stiffiy at attention, his 
furled red flag held like a rifle at his side, until the last coach 
had passed. 

At Spandau there lay acre upon acre of war material of 
every species, reddening with rust and overgrowing with 
grass and weeds. The sight of it aroused a few murmurs of 
discontent from my companions. But they soon fell back 
again into that apathetic silence that had reigned since our 
departure. A few had read awhile the morning papers, 
without a sign of feeling, though the head-lines must have 
been startling to a German, then laid them languidly aside. 
Apparently the lack of nourishing food left them too sleepy 
12 163 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

to talk. The deadly apathy of the compartment was quite 
the antithesis of what it would have been in France; a 
cargo of frozen meat could not have been more uncom- 
municative. 

The train showed a singular languor, due perhaps to its 
Ersatz coal. It got there eventually, but it seemed to have 
no reserve strength to give it vigorous spells. The station 
we should have passed at noon was not reached until one- 
thirty. Passengers timibled off en masse and besieged the 
platform lunch-room. There were Ersatz coffee, Ersatz 
cheese, watery beer, and war-bread for sale, the last only 
"against tickets." I had not yet been supplied with bread- 
coupons, but a fellow-passenger tossed me a pair of them 
and replied to my thanks with a silent nod. The nauseating 
stuff seemed to give the traveler a bit of surplus energy. 
They talked a little for the next few miles, though in dreary, 
apathetic tones. One had recently journeyed through the 
occupied area, and reported "every one is being treated 
fairly enough there, especially by the Americans." A 
languid discussion of the Allies ensued, but though it was 
evident that no one suspected my nationality, there was not 
a harsh word toward the enemy. Another advanced the 
wisdom of "seeing Germany first," insisting that the sons 
of the Fatherland had been too much given to running about 
foreign lands, to the neglect of their own. Those who car- 
ried lunches ate them without the suggestion of an offer 
to share them with their hungry companions, without even 
the apologetic pseudo-invitation of the Spaniard. Then 
one by one they drifted back to sleep again. 

The engine, too, seemed to pick up after lunch— or to 
strike a down-grade — and the thatched Gothic roofs of 
Mechlenburg soon began to dot the flat landscape. More 
people were working in the fields; cattle and sheep were 
grazing here and there. Groups of women came down to 
the stations to parade homeward with their returning soldier 

164 



FAMILY LIFE IN MECKLENBURG 

sons and brothers. Yet after the first greeting the unsuc- 
cessful warriors seemed to tire of the welcome and strode 
half proudly, half defiantly ahead, while the women dropped 
sadly to the rear. 

Where I changed cars, four fellow-travelers reached the 
station lunch-room before me and every edible thing was 
bestellt when my turn came. With three hours to wait I 
set out along the broad, well-kept highway. A village hotel 
served me a huge PJannkuchen made of real eggs, a few 
cold potatoes, and some species of preserved fruit, but 
declined to repeat the order. The bill reached the lofty 
heights of eight marks. Children playing along the way, 
and frequently groups of Sunday strollers, testified that 
there was more energy for unnecessary exertion here in 
the coimtry than in Berlin. The flat, well-plowed land, 
broken only by dark masses of forest, was already giving 
promise of a plentiful harvest. 

The two women in the compartment I entered at a station 
farther on gave only one sign of life during the journey. 
A railway coach on a siding bore a placard reading, * ' Vber- 
gabe Wagen an die Entente." The women gazed at it with 
pained expressions on their gaunt faces. 

"It's a fine new car, too," sighed one of them, at last, 
"with real leather and window-curtains. We don't get 
any such to ride in — and to think of giving it to England! 
Ach! These are sad times!" 

The sun was still above the horizon when I reached 
Schwerin, though it was nearly nine. There was a signif- 
icant sign of the times in the dilapidated coach which drove 
me to my destination for five marks. In the olden days 
one mark would have been considered a generous reward for 
the same journey in a spick-and-span outfit. The middle- 
aged woman who met me at the door was by no means the 
buxom matron she had been ten years before. But her 
welcome was none the less hearty. 

i6s , 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

''Bist du auch gegen uns gewesen?" she asked, softly, after 
her first words of greeting. "You, too, against us?" 

"Yes, I was with our army in France," I rephed, watch- 
ing her expression closely. 

There was regret in her manner, yet, as I had foreseen, 
not the faintest suspicion of resentment. The German is 
too well trained in obedience to government to dream that 
the individual may make a choice of his own international 
affairs. As long as I remained in the household there was 
never a hint from any member of it that the war had made 
any gulf between us. They could not have been more friendly 
had I arrived wearing the field gray of the Fatherland. 

A brief glance about the establishment sufficed to settle 
once for all the query as to whether the civil population 
of Germany had really suffered from the ravages of war 
and of the blockade. The family had been market-gardeners 
for generations. Ten years before they had been prosperous 
with the solid, material prosperity of the well-to-do middle 
class. In comparison with their neighbors they were still so, 
but it was a far call from the plenitude of former days to 
the scarcity that now showed its head on every hand. The 
establishment that had once been kept up with that pride 
of the old-fashioned German as for an old family heirloom, 
which laughs at unceasing labor to that end, was every- 
where sadly down at heel. The house was shedding its 
ancient paint; the ravages of weather and years gazed 
down with a neglected air ; the broken panes of glass in the 
hotbeds had not been replaced; farm wagons falsely sug- 
gested that the owner was indifferent to their upkeep; the 
very tools had all but outlived their usefulness. Not that 
the habit of unceasing labor had been lost. The family 
sleeping-hours were still from ten to four. But the war 
had reduced the available helping hands and the blockade 
had shut out materials and supplies, or forced them up to 
prices which none but the wealthy could reach. 

i66 




H O 



FAMILY LIFE IN MECKLENBURG 

Inside the house, particularly in the kitchen, the family- 
had been reduced to almost as rudimentary a life as the 
countrymen of Venezuela, so many were the every-day 
appliances that had been confiscated or shut off by the war- 
time government, so few the foodstuffs that could be 
obtained. Though other fuel was almost unattainable, 
gas could only be had from six to seven, eleven to twelve, 
and seven to eight. Electricity was turned on from dark 
until ten-thirty, which at that season of the year meant 
barely an hour. Petroleum or candles were seldom to be 
had. All the better utensils had long since been turned 
in to the government. When I unearthed a bar of soap 
from my baggage the family literally fell on my neck; the 
only piece in the house was about the size of a postage- 
stamp, and had been husbanded for weeks. Vegetables 
were beginning to appear from the garden; without them 
there would have been little more than water and salt to 
cook. In theory each adult member of the household 
received 125 grams of beef a week ; in practice they were 
lucky to get that much a month. What that meant 
in loss of energy I began to learn by experience; for a 
mere three days without meat left me weary and ambition- 
less. Those who could bring themselves to eat it might 
get horse-flesh in the markets, without tickets, but even 
that only in very limited quantities. The bread, "made 
of potatoes, turnips, and God knows what all they throw 
into it," was far from sufficient. Though the sons and 
daughters spent every Sunday foraging the country-side, they 
seldom brought home enough to make one genuine meal. 

The effect of continued malnutrition seemed to have been 
surprisingly slight on those in the prime of life. The 
children of ten years before, men and women now, were 
plump and hardy, though the color in their cheeks was 
by no means equal even to that of the grandfather — sleep- 
ing now in the churchyard — at the time of my former visit. 

167 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

Of the two granddaughters the one bom three years before, 
when the blockade was only beginning to be felt in these 
backwaters of the Empire, was stout and rosy enough; 
but her sister of nine months looked pitifully like the waxen 
image of a maltreated infant of half that age. The simple- 
hearted, plodding head of the household, nearing sixty, 
had shrunk almost beyond recognition to those who had 
known him in his plump and prosperous years, while his 
wife had outdistanced even him in her decline. 

Business in the market-gardening line had fallen off 
chiefly because of the scarcity of seeds and fertilizers. Then 
there was the ever more serious question of labor. Old 
women who had gladly accepted three marks for toiling 
from dawn until dark ten years before received eleven 
now for scratching languidly about the gardens a bare 
eight hours with their hoes and rakes. Male help had 
begun to drift back since the armistice, but it was by no 
means equal to the former standard in nimibers, strength, 
or willingness. On top of all this came a crushing burden of 
taxation. When all the demands of the government were 
reckoned up they equaled 40 per cent, of the ever-decreas- 
ing income. The war had brought one advantage, though 
it was as nothing compared to the misfortunes. For gen- 
erations two or three members of the family had spent 
six mornings a week, all summer long, at the market-place 
in the heart of town. Since the fall of 19 14 not a sprig of 
produce had been carried there for sale; clamoring women 
now besieged the gate of the establishment itself in far 
greater numbers than the gardens could supply. 

The hardship of the past four years was not the pre- 
vailing topic of conversation in the household, however, 
nor when the subject was forced upon them was it treated 
in a whining spirit. Most of the family, like their neighbors, 
adroitly avoided it, as a proud prize-fighter might sidestep 
references to the bruises of a recent beating. Only the 

168 



FAMILY LIFE IN MECKLENBURG 

mother could now and then be drawn into specifying details 
of the disaster. 

"Do you see the staging around our church there?" she 
asked, drawing me to a window one morning after I had 
persisted some time in my questions. "They are replacing 
with an Ersatz metal the copper that was taken from the 
steeple and the eaves. Even the bells went to the cannon- 
foundries, six of them, all but the one that is ringing now. 
I never hear it without thinking of an orphan child crying 
in the woods after all the rest of its family has been eaten 
by wolves. Ach! What we have not sacrificed in this 
fight to save the Fatherland from our wolfish enemies! 
We gave up our gold and our silver, then our nickel and 
our copper, even our smallest pots and pans, our alumi- 
num and our lead, our leather and our rubber, down to the 
last bicycle tire. The horses and the cows are gone, too — I 
have only goats to milk now. Then the struggles I have had 
to keep the family clothed! Cloth that used to cost fifty 
pfennigs a meter has gone up to fifteen marks, and we can 
scarcely find any of that. Even thread is sold only against 
tickets, and we are lucky to get a spool a month. We are 
far better off than the poor people, too, who can only afford 
the miserable stuff made of paper or nettles. America also 
wants to destroy us; she will not even send us cotton. 
And the wicked Schleichhandel and profiteering that go 
on ! Every city has a hotel or two where you can get any- 
thing you want to eat — if you can pay for it. Yet our honest 
tickets are often of no use because rascals have bought up 
everything at wicked prices. If we do not get food soon 
even this Handarbeiter government will recommence war 
against France, surely as you are sitting there. The young 
men are all ready to get up and follow our generals. The 
new volimteer corps are taking on thousands every day. 
Ach! The sufferings of these last years! And now our 
cruel enemies expect our poor brave prisoners to rebuild 

169 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

Europe. But then, I have no right to complain. At least 
my dear own boy was not taken from me." 

The son, whom we will call Heinrich, I had last seen 
as a child in knickerbockers. Now he was a powerful, two- 
fisted fellow of twenty-one, with a man's outlook on life. 
Having enlisted as a Freiwilliger on his sixteenth birthday, 
at the outbreak of the war, he had seen constant service in 
Russia, Rumania, and in all the hottest sectors of the 
western front, had been twice wounded, twice decorated 
with those baubles with which princes coax men to die for 
them, and had returned home with the highest non-com- 
missioned rank in the German army. What struck one 
most forcibly was the lack of opportunity offered such men 
as he by their beloved Fatherland. In contrast with the 
positions that would have been open to so promising a 
youngster, with long experience in the command of men, in 
America, he had found nothing better than an apprentice- 
ship in the hardware trade, paying forty marks for the 
privilege and bound to serve three long years without pay. 
Like nearly all the young men in town, from grocery clerks 
to bankers' sons, he still wore his uniform, stripped of its 
marks of rank, not out of pride, but because civilian clothing 
was too great a luxury to be indulged, except on Sundays. 
I was surprised, too, at the lack of haughtiness which I had 
fancied every soldier of Germany felt for his calling. When 
I made some casual remark about the gorgeous spiked hel- 
met he had worn, with its Prussian and Mechlenburger 
cockades, which I took for granted he would set great store 
by to the ends of his days, he tossed it toward me with: 
' ' Here, take the thing along, if you want it. It will make a 
nice souvenir of your visit." When I coaxed him outdoors 
to be photographed in his two iron crosses, he would not put 
them on imtil we had reached a secluded comer of the garden, 
because, as he explained, the neighbors might think he was 

boastful. 

170 



FAMILY LIFE IN MECKLENBURG 

"I should gladly have died for the Fatherland," he 
remarked, as he tossed the trinkets back into the drawer 
full of miscellaneous junk from which he had fished them, 
"if only Germany had won the war. But not for this! 
Not I, with no other satisfaction than the poor fellows we 
buried out there would feel if they could sit up in their 
graves and look about them." 

There were startling changes in the solemn, patriarchal 
attitude toward life which I had found so amusing, yet so 
charming, in the simple people of rural Germany at the time 
of my first visit. The war seemed to have given a sad 
jolt to the conservative old customs of former days, particu- 
larly among the young people. Perhaps the most tangible/ 
evidence of this fact was to see the daughters calmly light 
cigarettes, while the sternly religious father of ten years 
before, who would then have flayed them for sneezing in 
church, looked idly on without a sign of protest. They were 
still at bottom the proper German Frduleins of the rural 
middle class — though as much could not be said of all the 
sex even in respectable old Schwerin — ^but on the surface 
there were many of these little tendencies toward the 
Leichtsinnig. 

When it came to discussions of the war and Germany's 
conduct of it, I found no way in which we could get together. 
We might have argued until doomsday, were it fitting for a 
guest to badger his hosts, without coming to a single point 
of agreement. Every one of the old fallacies was still swal- 
lowed, hook and line. If I had expected national disaster 
to bring a change of heart, I should have been grievously 
disappointed. To be sure, Mechlenburg is one of the 
remotest backwaters of the Empire, and these laborious, 
unimaginative tillers of the soil one of its most conservative 
elements. They would have considered it unseemly to 
make a business of thinking for themselves in political 
matters, something akin to accepting a position for which 

171 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

they had no previous training. There was that to arouse 
pity in the success with which the governing class had 
made use of this simple, unquestioning attitude for its own 
ends. One felt certain that these honest, straightforward 
victims of premeditated official lies would never have lent 
a helping hand had they known that the Fatherland was 
engaged in a war of conquest and not a war of defense. 

Here again it was the mother who was most outspoken 
toward what she called "the wicked wrecking of poor, 
innocent Germany." The father and the children expressed 
themselves more calmly, if at all, though it was evident 
that their convictions were the same. Apparently they 
had reached the point where further defense of what they 
regarded as the plain facts of the situation seemed a waste 
of words. 

"I cried when the armistice was signed," the mother 
confided to me one day, "for it meant that our enemies 
had done what they set out to do many years ago. They 
deliberately planned to destroy us, and they succeeded. 
But they were never able to defeat our wonderful armies 
in the field. England starved us, otherwise she would 
never have won. Then she fostered this Bolshevismus and 
Spartakismus and the wicked revolution that imdermined 
us at the rear. But our brave soldiers at the front never 
gave way : they would never have retreated a yard but for 
the breakdown at home." 

She was a veritable mine of stories of atrocities by the 
English, the French, and especially the Russians, but she 
insisted there had never been one committed by the Germans. 

"Our courageous soldiers were never like that," she pro- 
tested. "They did not make war that way, like our 
heartless enemies." 

Yet in the same breath she rambled on into anecdotes 
of what any one of less prejudiced viewpoint would have 
called atrocities, but which she advanced as examples of 

172 



FAMILY LIFE IN MECKLENBURG 

the fighting quahties of the German troops. There again 
came in that curious German psychology, or mentaHty, or 
insanity, or whatever you choose to call it, which has always 
astounded the world at large. "Heinie" had seen the 
hungry soldiers recoup themselves by taking food away 
from the wicked Rumanians; he had often told how they 
entered the houses and carried away everything portable 
to sell to the Jews at a song, that the next battle should 
not find them unprepared. The officers had just pretended 
they did not see the men, for they could not let them go 
unfed. They had taken things themselves, too, especially 
the reserve officers. But then, war is war. If only . I 
could get "Heinie" to tell some of the things he had seen 
and heard ; how, for instance, the dastardly Russians had 
screamed when they were pushed back into the marshes, 
whole armies of them. 

I found more interest in "Heinle's" stories of the insuper- 
able difficulties he had overcome as a Feldwebel in keeping 
up the discipline of his men after the failure of the last great 
German offensive, but I did not press that point in her 
presence. 

"No," she went on, in answer to another question, "the 
Germans never did anything against women. Those are all 
English lies! Heinie never told me of a single case" — 
"Heinie" was, of course, no more apt to tell mother such 
details than would one of the well-bred boys of our own 
Puritan society, but I kept the mental comment to myself. 
"Of course there were those shameless Polish girls, and 
French and Belgian hussies, who gave themselves freely 
to the soldiers, but. . . 

* * Certainly the Kaiser will come back, ' ' she insisted. * * We 
need our Kaiser; we need princes, to govern the Empire. 
What are Ebert and all that crowd? Handarbeiter, hand 
workers, and nothing more. It is absurd to think that they 
can do the work of rulers. We need our princes, who have 

173 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

had generations of training in governing. Siehst du, I will 
give you an example. We have been Handelsgartner for 
generations. Hermann knows all about the business of 
gardening, because he was trained to it as a boy, nicht wahr? 
Do you think a man who had never planted a cabbage 
could come and do Hermann's work? Ausgeschlossen! 
Well, it is just as foolish for a Handarbeiter like Ebert to 
attempt to become a ruler as it would be for one of our 
princes to try to run Hermann's garden. 

"Germany is divided into three classes — the rulers, the 
middle class (to which we belong), and the proletariat or 
hand-workers, which includes Ebert and all these new 
upstarts. It is ridiculous to be getting these distinctions 
all mixed up. Leave the governing to the princes and 
their army officers and the Junkers. We use the nickname 
'Junker' for our noble gentlemen, von Bemstorff, for 
instance, who is well known in America, and all the others 
who have a real right to use the 'von' before their names, 
whose ancestors were first highway robbers and then bold 
warriors, and who are naturally very proud" — she evidently 
thought this pride quite proper and fitting. ' ' Then our army 
officers are chosen from the very best families and can 
marry only in the gelehrten class, and only then if the girl 
has a dowry of at least eight hundred thousand marks. 
So they preserve all the nobility of their caste down through 
every generation and keep themselves quite free from 
middle-class taint — the real officers I am speaking of, 
not the Reservisten, who are just ordinary middle-class men, 
merchants and doctors and teachers and the like, acting 
as officers during the war. Those are the men who are 
trained to govern, and the only ones who can govern." 

I knew, of course, that the great god of class was still 
ruling in Germany, but I confess that this bald statement 
of that fact left me somewhat flabbergasted. It is well 
to be reminded now and again, however, that the Teuton 

174 




A COACHMAN OF MUNICH READING THE PEACE TERMS 



FAMILY LIFE IN MECKLENBURG 

regards politics, diplomacy, and government as lifelong 
professions and not merely as the fleeting pastimes of 
lawyers, automobile-makers, and unsuccessful farmers; it 
clarifies our vision and aids us to see his problems more 
nearly as he sees them. 

Several rambles in and about Schwerin only confirmed the 
impressions I had already formed — that the region was 
hopelessly conservative and that it had really seriously 
suffered from the war and the blockade. On the surface 
there was often no great change to be seen; but scratch 
beneath it anywhere and a host of social skeletons was sure 
to come to light. Even the famous old Schweriner- 
schloss, perhaps the most splendid castle in Germany, 
showed both this conservatism and the distress of the past 
years. The repairs it was undergoing after a recent fire 
had ceased abruptly with the flight of the reigning family 
of Mechlenburg, but the marks of something more serious 
than the conflagration showed in its seedy outward appear- 
ance. Yet not a chair had been disturbed within it, for 
all the revolution, and guards stationed about it by the 
Soldiers' Council protected it as zealously as if they, too, 
were waiting for ' ' our princes " to come back again. Almost 
the only sign of the new order of things was the sight of a 
score or more of discharged soldiers calmly fishing in the 
great Schwerinersee about the castle, a crime that would 
have met with summary vengeance in the old ducal days. 

Rumor having it that the peace terms were to be pub- 
lished that afternoon, I hastily took train one morning 
back to Berlin, that I might be in the heart of the uproar 
they were expected to arouse. At the frontier of Mech- 
lenburg soldiers of the late dukedom went carefully through 
passengers' baggage in search of food, particularly eggs, 
of which a local ordinance forbade the exportation. The 
quest seemed to be thorough and I saw no tips passed, but 
there was considerable successful smuggling, which came 

175 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

to light as soon as the train was well under way again. 
A well-dressed merchant beside me boastfully displayed a 
twenty-mark sausage in the bottom of his innocent-looking 
hand-bag, and his neighbors, not to be outdone in proof of 
cleverness, showed their caches of edibles laboriously con- 
cealed in brief-cases, hat-boxes, and laundry-bags. 

"The peasants have grown absolutely shameless," it was 
agreed. "They have the audacity to demand a mark or 
more for a single egg, and twenty for a chicken" — ^in other 
words, the rascals had turned upon the bourgeois some 
of his own favorite tricks, taking advantage of conditions 
which these same merchants would have considered legiti- 
mate sources of profit in their own business. Wrath against 
the "conscienceless" countrymen was unhmited, but no 
one thought of shaming the smugglers for their cheating. 

The contrast between the outward courtesy of these 
punctilious examples of the well-to-do class and their total 
lack of real, active politeness was provoking. A first-class 
compartment had been reserved for a sick soldier who was 
plainly on his last journey, with a comrade in attendance. 
Travelers visibly able to stand in the corridor crowded 
in upon him until the section built for six held thirteen, 
and forced the invalid to crouch upright in a corner. Women 
were rudely, almost brutally, refused seats, unless they 
were pretty, in which case they were overwhelmed with 
fawning attentions. 

A discussion of America broke out in the compartment 
I occupied. It resembled an exchange of opinions on the 
character of some dear friend of the gathering who had 
inadvertently committed some slight social breach. There 
was not a word at which the most chauvinistic of my fellow- 
countrymen could have taken offense. When I had listened 
for some time to the inexplicable expressions of affection 
for the nation that had turned the scales against their 
beloved Fatherland, I discarded my incognito. My com- 

176 



FAMILY LIFE IN MECKLENBURG 

panions acknowledged themselves surprised, then redoubled 
their assertions of friendliness. Was their attitude a mere 
pose, assumed on the chance of being heard by some repre- 
sentative of the country they hoped to placate? It seemed 
unlikely, for they had had no reason to suspect my national- 
ity. I decided to overstep the bounds of veracity in the 
hope of getting at their real thoughts, if those they were 
expressing were merely assumed. 

"I said I am an American," I broke in, **but do not mis- 
understand me. We Chileans are quite as truly Americans 
as those grasping Yankees who have been fighting against 
you." 

To my astonishment, the entire group sprang instantly 
to the defense of my real countrymen as against those I had 
falsely adopted. All the silly slanders I had once heard in 
Chile they discarded as such, and advanced proofs of 
Yankee integrity which even I could not have assembled. 

"You Chileans have nothing to fear from American 
aggression," the possessor of the twenty-mark sausage 
concluded, reassuringly, as the rumble of the train crossing 
the Spree set us to gathering our traps together. "The 
North Americans are a well-meaning people; but they are 
young, and England and France have led them temporarily 
astray, though they have not succeeded in corrupting their 
simple natures." 



IX 

THUS SPEAKS GERMANY 

LEST he talk all the pleasure out of the rambles ahead^ 
^ let us get the German's opinion of the war cleared up 
before we start, even if we have to reach forward now and 
then for some of the things we shall hear on the way. I 
propose, therefore, to give him the floor unreservedly for 
a half-hour, without interruption, unless it be to throw in a 
question now and then to make his position and his some- 
times curious mental processes clearer. • The reader who 
feels that the prisoner at the bar is not entitled to tell his 
side of the story can easily skip this chapter. 

Though I did not get it all from any one person — ^no resi- 
dent of the Fatherland talked so long in the himgry armistice 
days — the German point of view averaged about as follows. 
There were plenty of variations from this central line, and I 
shall attempt to show the frontier of these deviations as 
we go along. We shall probably not find this statement 
of his point of view very original; most of his arguments 
we have heard before, chiefly while the question of our 
coming or not coming into the war was seething. Fifteen 
years ago, when I first visited him at home, I did not gather 
the impression that every German thought alike. To-day 
he seems to reach the same conclusions by the same curious 
trains of thought, no matter what his caste, profession, 
experience, and to some extent his environment — for even 
those who remained far from the scene of conflict during 

178 




THE GERMAN SOLDIER IS NOT ALWAYS SAVAGE OF FACE 




THE GERMAN S ARTISTIC SENSE LEADS HIM TO OVERDECORATE EVEN HIS 

MERRY-GO-ROUNDS 



THUS SPEAKS GERMANY 

all the war seem to have worked themselves into much the 
same mental attitude as their people at home. But then, 
this is also largely true of his enemies, among whom one 
hears almost as frequently the tiresome repetition of the 
same stereotyped conclusions that have in some cases been 
deliberately manufactured for public consumption. One 
comes at times to question whether there is really any gain 
nowadays in running about the earth gathering men's 
opinions, for they so often bear the factory-made label, 
the trade-mark of one great central plant, like the material 
commodities of our modern industrial world. The press, 
the cable, the propagandist, and the printer have made a 
thinking-machine, as Edison has made a talking-machine, 
and Burroughs a mechanical arithmetic. 

The first, of course, if not the burning question of the 
controversy was, who started the war, and why? The 
German at home showed a certain impatience* at this query, 
as a politician might at a question that he had already 
repeatedly explained to his constituents. But with care 
and perseverance he could usually be drawn into the dis- 
cussion, whereupon he outlined the prevailing opinion, 
with such minor variations as his slight individuality per- 
mitted; almost- always without heat, always without that 
stone-blind prejudice that is so frequent among the Allied 
man in the street. Then he fell into apathetic silence or 
harked back to the ever-present question of food. But 
let him tell it in his own way. 

"The war was started by circumstances. War had be- 
come a necessity to an over-prosperous world, as bleeding 
sometimes becomes necessary to a fat person. Neither side 
was wholly and deliberately guilty of beginning it, but 
if there is actual personal guilt, it is chiefly that of the 
Allies, especially England. We understand the hatred of 
France. It came largely from fear, though to a great 
extent unnecessary fear. The ruling party in Russia 

13 179 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

wanted war, wanted it as early as 1909, for without it they 
would have lost their power. It was a question of interior 
politics with them. But with England there was less 
excuse. In* her case it was only envy and selfishness ; the 
petty motives that sprout in a shopkeeper's soul. We were 
making successful concurrenz against her in all the mar- 
kets of the world — though by our German word 'con- 
current' we mean more than mere commercial com- 
petition; she saw herself in danger of losing the hegemony 
of Europe, her position as the most important nation on the 
globe. She set out deliberately to destroy us, to vernichten, 
to bring us to nothing. We hate" — though come to think 
of it I do not recall once having heard a German use the 
word hate in describing his own feelings, nor did I run 
across any reference to the notdrious "Hymn of Hate" 
during all my travels through the Empire — "we dislike, 
then, we blame England most, for it was she more than 
any other one party in the controversy who planned and 
nourished it. How? By making an Entente against us 
that surrounded us with a steel wall; by bolstering up the 
revanche feeling in France; by urging on the ruling class 
in Russia; by playing on the dormant brutality of the 
Russian masses and catering to the natural fanaticism 
of the French, deliberately keeping alive their desire to 
recover Alsace-Lorraine. Edward VII set the ball roUing 
with his constant visits to Paris." 

"I had much intercourse and correspondence with French- 
men before the war," said a German professor of European 
history, "and I found a willingness among those of my 
own generation, those between thirty and fifty, to drop the 
matter, to admit that, after all, Alsace-Lorraine was as much 
German as French. Then some ten years ago I began to 
note a change of tone. The younger generation was being 
pumped full of the revanche spirit from the day they started 
to school; in foreign countries every French text-book in- 

180 



THUS SPEAKS GERMANY 

cited crocodile tears over the poor statue of Strassburg, 
with its withered flowers. It was this younger generation 
that brought France into the war — this and Clemenceau, 
who is still living back in 1870." 

"But the despatches, the official state papers already pub- 
lished, show that England was doing her best to avoid ..." 

* ' Oh, you simple Americans ! You do not seem ta realize 
that such things are made for foreign consumption, made 
to sell, to flash before a gaping world, to publish in the 
school-books of the future, not for actual use, not to be 
seriously believed by the experienced and the disillusioned. 
That has been the story of European politics for centuries, 
since long before you dear, n^ive people came into existence. 
You are like a new-comer dropping into a poker game that 
has been going on since long before you learned to dis- 
tinguish one card from another. You do not guess that 
the deck is pin-pricked and that every kind of underhand 
trick is tacitly allowed, so long as the player can 'get away 
with it.' Now if we could get the really secret papers that 
passed back and forth, especially if we could get what went 
on in private conversation or 'way inside the heads of Grey 
and the rest of them ..." 

"Yes, but — ^you will pardon my naivete, I am sure — 
but if England had long deliberately planned a European 
war, why did she have nothing but a contemp — but a very 
small arrriy ready when it broke out?" 

"Because she expected, as usual, to have some one else 
do her fighting for her. And' she succeeded ! When they 
were aknost burned beyond recovery she. got America to 
puU her chestnuts out of the fire — and now America does 
not even get enough out of it to salve her scorched fingers. 
But for America we should have won the war, unquestion- 
ably. But England has lost it, in a way, too, for she has 
been forced to let America assume the most important place 
in the world. You will have a war with England your- 

181 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

selves for that very reason in a few years, as soon as she 
catches her breath and discovers you at the head of the 
table, in the seat which she has so long arrogated to herself. 
You will be her next victim — ^with Japan jumping on your 
back the moment it is turned. 

"Yes, in one sense Germany did want war. She had to 
have it or die, for the steel wall England had been forging 
about her for twenty years was crushing our life out and 
had to be broken. Then, too, there was one party, the 
'Old Germans' — what you call the Junkers — that was not 
averse to such a contest. The munition-makers wanted 
war, of course; they always do. Some of our generals" — 
Ludendorff was the name most frequently heard in this 
connection; Hindenburg never — "wanted it. But it is 
absurd to accuse the Kaiser of starting it, simply because 
he was the figurehead, the most prominent bugaboo, a 
catchword for the mob. The HohenzoUerns did us much 
damage; but they also brought us much good. The Kaiser 
loved peace and did all in his power to keep it. He was the 
only emperor — we were the only large nation that had waged 
no war or stolen no territory since 1871. But the English- 
French-Russian combination drove us into a corner. We 
had to have the best army in the world, just as England 
has to have the best navy. We had no world-conquering 
ambitions; we had no 'Drang nach Osten,' which our enemies 
have so often charged against us, except for trade. Our 
diplomats were not what they should have been ; Bethmann- 
Hollweg has as much guilt as any one in the whole affair, 
on our side. We have had no real diplomats, except von 
Biilow, since Bismarck. But the Germans as a nation 
never wanted war. The Kaiser would not have declared it 
even when he did had he not feared that the Social Demo- 
crats would desert him in the crisis if it were put off longer. 
We had only self -protection as our war aim from the begin- 
ning, but we did not dare openly say so for fear the enemy, 

182 



THUS SPEAKS GERMANY 

which had decided on our annihilation, would take it as an 
admission of weakness." 

This v/hitewashing of the Kaiser was universal in Ger- 
many, as far as my personal experience goes. No one, 
whatever his age, sex, caste, place of residence, or political 
complexion, accused him of being more than an accessory 
before the. fact. The most rabid — pardon, I never heard a 
German speak rabidly on any subject, imless it was perhaps 
the lack of food and tobacco — the most decidedly monarchi- 
cal always softened any criticism of the ex-emperor with the 
footnote that he, after all, was not chiefly to blame. His 
bad counselors, the force of circumstances over which he 
had Httle control . . . and so on. Then there were those, 
particularly, though not entirely, in the back-waters of 
Prussia, the women especially, who gazed after his retreated 
figure pityingly, almost tearfully, as if he had been the 
principal sufferer from the catastrophe. 

Nor did I ever hear any German, not even a SociaHst of 
the extremest left, not even a Bavarian, admit that Ger- 
many was wholly in the wrong. Once only did I hear a man 
go so far as to assert that Germany had at least half the 
guilt of the war. He was a stanch-minded, rather con- 
servative Socialist living in the Polish atmosphere of Brom- 
berg. On the other hand, citizens of the Allied countries, 
who had dwelt in Germany since 1914, were all more or 
less firm converts to the England-France-Russia theory. 
Such is the power of environment. An English governess, 
who had lost a brother in the war and who was returning 
home for the first time since it began, expressed the fear 
that she would soon be compelled to retiun to Germany 
to preserve her peace of mind. A few laid the blame 
entirely to Russia; some charged it all to "the Jews," 
implying a rather extraordinary power on the part of the 
million or so of that race within the Empire. 

Now and then one ran across a simple old countryman 

183 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

who took his opinions wholly and unreservedly as they had 
been delivered to him, without ever having opened the 
package. "How did it start? Why, let's see. They 
killed somer prince down in . . . somewhere or other, I 
never can renlember these foreign names, and his wife, too, 
if I remember, and then. Russia ..." and so on. He was 
of the same class as those who asserted, "I don't know 
when gas was first used, or just where, but it was by the 
wicked French — or was it the scoundrelly English?" But 
these simple, swallow-it-whole yokels were on the whole 
more rare than they would have been in many another 
land. However much we may sneer at her Kultur, the 
Kaiser regime brought to the most distant corners of the 
Empire a certain degree of instruction, even if it was only 
of a deliberately Teutonic brand. In the great majority 
of cases one was astounded at the clear, comprehensive, 
and, within limits, unprejudiced view of all the field of 
European politics of many a peasant grubbing out his 
existence on a remote hillside. More than one of them 
could have exchanged minds with some of our national 
officials to the decided advantage of the latter. My memory 
still harks back to the tall, ungainly farmer in whose lowly 
little inn I spent the last night of my German tramp, a 
man who had lived almost incessantly in the trenches 
during all the war, and returned home still a "simple soldier," 
who topped off a sharp, clear-cut expose of the politics 
of Europe for the past half -century with: "Who started it? 
Listen. Suppose a diligent, sober, hard-working mechanic 
is engaged on the same job with an arrogant, often careless, 
and sometimes intoxicated competitor. Suppose the com- 
petitor begins to note that if things go on as they are the 
sober mechanic will in time be given all the work, for being 
the more efficient, or that there will come a time when, 
thanks to his diligence, there will be no work left for either 
of them. If the rowdy suddenly strikes his rival a foul 



THUS SPEAKS GERMANY 

blow in the back when he is not looking and the hard- 
worker drops his tools and strikes back, who started it?" 

On the conduct of the war there was as nearly unanimity 
of opinion as on its genesis. "The Russians and the French, 
secretly sustained by England, invaded Germany first. 
William" — they call him that almost as often as the Kaiser 
now — "who was the only important ruler who had not 
declared war in more than forty years, gave them twelve 
hours to desist from their designs; they refused, and the 
war went on. Had we planned to go to war we should 
certainly have passed the tip to the millions of Germans 
in foreign lands in time for them to have reached Germany. 
You yourself have seen how they poured down to the ports 
when they heard of the Fatherland's danger, and how 
regretfully they returned to their far-off duties when it 
became apparent that England was not going to let them 
come home. Then we went through Belgium. We should 
not have done so, of course, but any people would have 
done the same to protect its national existence. Besides, 
we offered to do so peacefully; the stubborn Belgians 
would not have suffered in the slightest. And Belgium 
had a secret treaty with the Entente that would have per- 
mitted them to attack us from that side ..." and so on. 

"Moral guilt? Not the slightest. As we feel no guilt 
whatever for starting the war — because we did not start it — 
so we feel none for any of the ways in which we waged it. 
The U-boats? What was our drowning of a few silly pas- 
sengers who insisted on traveling compared with what the 
British were doing in starving our women and children, 
our entire nation?" (The old specious argument about the 
warning not to take the Lusitania was still frequently 
heard.) "We had to use U-boats or starve. A hysterical 
world blamed us for the more dramatic but by far the less 
wicked of two weapons. Drowning is a pleasant death 
compared with starvation. War is war. But it was a very 

185 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

stupid mistake on the part of old fool Tirpitz." (The 
admiral probably had his whiskers pulled more often, 
figuratively, than any other man in the Empire. True, 
he was almost the only German left who felt capable of still 
nourishing so luxurious an adornment. But the U-boat 
policy had very few partizans left.) "Moral guilt, most 
certainly not. But it was the height of asininity. If he 
had had ten times as many U-boats, yes, by all means. 
But not when it brought in America and still failed to break 
the blockade. If the U-boat fans had not insisted on their 
program the war would have been over in 1916. But 
America would probably have come in, anyway; there were 
her loans to the Allies, and the munitions she furnished 
them. America, we suspect, was chiefly interested in her 
interest." 

To all charges of unfair methods of warfare, of tyranny 
over the civilian population, of atrocities, Germany replied 
with an all-embracing: "You're another." "If we first 
used gas" — which by no means all Germans admitted — 
"think of those dreadful tanks! If we bombed London and 
Paris, see how our dear brethren along the Rhine suffered 
from your airmen. If we were forced to be stem with the 
population of the occupied regions, go hear what the Rus- 
sians did in our eastern provinces. You make martyrs 
of your Cavells and Fryatts; we can name you scores of 
Germans who suffered worse far more unjustly. As to 
accusing us of wanton atrocities, that has become one of the 
recognized weapons of modern warfare, one of the tricks 
of the game, this shouting of calumnies against your gagged 
enemy to a keenly listening audience not averse to feeding 
on such morbid morsels. It was accepted as a recognized 
misdeal in the political poker game as far back as the Boer 
War, when the science of photography first reached the 
advanced stage that made it possible to show English 
soldiers catching on their bayonets babies that had never 

186 



THUS SPEAKS GERMANY 

been within a hundred miles of them. Like all the under- 
hand moves, it was immensely improved or perfected dur- 
ing this long Hfe-and-death struggle. That was one of the 
things we somewhat neglected, first from lack of foresight, 
later because of the impossibility of making oiu-selves 
heard by the audience, of getting it across the footlights, 
while our enemies screened the whole front of the stage. 
Ninety per cent, of the so-called atrocities were made out of 
whole cloth, or out of very slight remnants. We admit the 
cleverness of the other side in 'getting away with it,' but 
now that it has served its purpose we expect him, if he is 
the fair sportsman he pretends, to acknowledge it was only 
a trick, at least as soon as the smoke and heat of action have 
cleared a bit." (This view was widely held among citizens 
of Allied nations who have traveled in Germany since the 
signing of the armistice, though few of them admitted it 
except in private conversation.) "There were, of course, 
things that should not have been. There are in all armies; 
there have been in all wars, and always will be. But if 
some of our soldiers forgot themselves, if our reserve officers 
were not always of the high standard their position called 
for, let us tell you of some of the horrible things the Russians 
perpetrated in our eastern provinces" — somehow Germany 
always seemed to flee eastward when this question of 
atrocities came up. 

"One of our greatest mistakes was the failure to realize 
the value of reclame, of publicity, propaganda, advertising, 
or whatever you choose to call it, until it was too late." 
(Berlin was showing one of our great "Hun" pictures in 
her principal cinemas at the time of my visit, partly for the 
amusement of seeing themselves as others see them, but 
chiefly as an example of how they "missed a bet" in not 
discovering how the "movies" could also be "mobilized" 
for war ends.) "The United States was finally led astray 
and brought into the war chiefly because England and 

187 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

France made skilful use of propaganda, because they con- 
trolled the great avenues of the transmission of news. It 
looks like a silly, childish little trick for the Allies to take 
our cables away from us — along with our milch cows — 
but it is really very important, for they keep on telling 
unrefuted lies about us as long as it serves their purposes. 
Now that they have a clear field, they will discolor the 
facts more than ever. They censored, doctored their pub- 
lic prints far more than we did. See how they dare not 
even yet publish the terms of the treaty that was handed 
us at Versailles ; yet we have had them here in Germany for 
days. Even the French Chamber and the American Senate 
got them first from our papers. Open diplomacy indeed! 
There never was a time during the war that French and 
English and, when we could get them, American papers 
could not be bought at any kiosk in our larger cities. Look 
at Haase, who publishes daily the strongest kind of attacks 
on the government, quite openly, while the newspapers of 
Paris are still sprinkled with the long white hoofprints of 
the censor. 

"We admit our fault — and we are now paying for it. 
This publicity was one of the 'perfectly legitimate' moves 
in the crooked game of war, one of the cleverest of the 
tricks, and we overlooked it, thanks to the thick heads of 
our diplomats! It was perhaps the deciding factor. The 
English with their shopkeeper souls; the French, crudely 
materialistic under their pretended love of art; the traitor- 
ous Italians — ^were not equal all together to downing us. 
But when they succeeded in talking over America, a great 
big healthy child overtopping them all, naive, inexperienced, 
rather flattered at being let into a man's game, somewhat 
hysterical" — I am putting things a bit more baldly than I 
ever heard them stated, but that is what was meant — 
' ' we might have known it was all over with us. Now we are 
in a pretty predicament. We have no national wealth left, 



THUS SPEAKS GERMANY 

except our labor, for we have given up everything else. 
We cannot even emigrate — except to Russia. My children 
will see a great combination with them, unless this Bol- 
shevism sweeps all before it now while the bars are down. 

"But we were never defeated militarily. Ausgeschlossen! 
We won the war — on the field of battle, such a war as was 
never before waged against a nation in all history. That 
is what makes our real defeat so bitter. America did it, 
with her unlimited flood of materials, her endless resources, 
plus the hunger blockade. With the whole world against 
us and starvation undermining us at the rear, what was left 
for us? But we still held our front ; our line never cracked. 
The German army was the best in the world — to-day the 
American is — its discipline was strict, but there was a rea- 
son, centuries of experience, behind every command. But 
the war lasted too long; we got overtrained, went stale 
and . . ." 

No German, from the mouth of the Elbe to the mountains 
of Bavaria, admitted for an instant that his army was 
defeated. Whatever their other opinions, the Boches in- 
sisted on hugging to themselves the cold conviction that 
they were beaten from within, never by a foreign enemy. 
They seemed almost fond of boasting that it took America 
with her boundless resources to turn the scales against 
them. But they were not always consistent in this view, 
for they admitted that with the failure of the last offen- 
sive they knew the game was up; they admitted that 
Hindenburg himself asserted that the side that succeeded 
in bringing up the last half -million fresh troops would win 
the war. In this connection it may be of interest to hear 
what the German Staff (American Intelligence Section) 
thought of the American army. "The United States en- 
listed men," runs their statement, "were excellent soldiers. 
They took battle as an adventure and were the best shock 
troops of the war when it ended. Their officers were good 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

up to and sometimes through battalion commanders; above 
that they were astonishingly weak." 

Throughout all Germany the proposed peace terms were 
received in much the same spirit they had been in Berlin. 
Outwardly they were greeted with surprising calmness, 
almost apathy. But one could find protests and to spare 
by knowing where to listen. "This peace is even less open 
and fair than that of the Congress of Vienna," came the 
first returns. "We expected to lose some territory in the 
east, perhaps, but that Alsace-Lorraine should be allowed 
to vote which of us she cared to join, that 'self-determina- 
tion' of which Wilson has spoken so much. Both of those 
provinces always belonged to Germany, except for the 
hundred years between the time Louis XIV stole them from 
us and Bismarck won them back; they belonged to Ger- 
many just as much as Poland ever did to the Poles. Lor- 
raine may want to be French; Alsace certainly does not, 
and never did." 

It seemed to be the old men who resented most the loss 
of territory, as the women were most savage in their expres- 
sions. Probably grandfather would miss the far corner 
lot more than would the younger members of the family, 
who had not been accustomed to seeing it so long. When 
one could get the Germans to specify, they rated the pro- 
posed terms about as follows: "The loss of the Saar is the 
worst; the losses in the east, second; the loss of our colonies, 
third." But they reminded one of a man who has just 
returned home and found his house wrecked — the farther 
he looks the more damage he discovers; at each new dis- 
covery he gasps a bit more chokingly, and finally stands 
dumb before the immensity of the catastrophe that has 
befallen him, for some time undecided just what his next 
move shall be. "We would rather pay any amount of 
indemnity than lose territory," they went on, at last. "It 

is a crime to occupy the Rhineland, the richest, most tax- 

190 



THUS SPEAKS GERMANY 

able, the most freedom-loving part of Germany. And now 
they are trying to steal that from us in addition ! The Allies 
are trying to Balkanize us. They do not want money from 
us; they want to vernichten us, to destroy us completely. 
The immense majority of the people of the Rhineland do not 
want to abandon us; they are loyal to the Empire. But 
the French have the upper hand now; they protect the few 
self-seekers who are riding it over the loyal masses; the 
British are willing and the Americans are simple enough 
to believe that the republic that is to have its capital in 
Coblenz represents the desires of the majority. Never! 
The Catholics and the capitalists combined to form the 
Rhine Republic, with the aid of the French — because they 
could thus both have more power for themselves." (How 
true this statement may be I can only judge from the 
fact that a very small minority of those I questioned on the 
subject while with the Army of Occupation expressed any 
desire to see the region separated from Germany, and that I 
found virtually no sentiment for abandoning the Empire 
in any portion whatever of unoccupied Germany.) 

"Then these new frontiers in the east were set by men 
who know the conditions there only from books, not from 
being on the spot, or at best by men who were misinformed 
by the stupid or biased agents they sent. Thus many 
towns almost wholly inhabited by Germans are now to be 
given to the Poles, and vice versa.'' As to the proposed 
punishment of the Kaiser, though there seemed to be very- 
little love and no great loyalty — except in acquitting him 
on the score of beginning the war — left for him among the 
great mass of the people, this clause aroused as great wrath 
as any. The German saw in it a matter of national honor. 

Such anger as the peace terms aroused was, of course, 
chiefly poured out upon President Wilson. "We believed 
in Wilson and he betrayed us," protested a cantankerous 
old man. "Wilson told us that if we chased the Hohenzol- 

191 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

lerns out he would 'treat us right ' ; we did so, and now look 
what he has gone and done to us ! He has led us to slaughter, 
and all the time we thought he was leading us out of the 
wilderness. He has grossly betrayed us. People put too 
much faith in him. I never did, for I always considered his 
lean face the mask of hypocrisy, not the countenance of 
justice and idealism. We Germans, with few exceptions, 
believed him to be a noble character, whereas he is operated 
by strings in the hands of the American capitalists, like 
the puppets the children at the Guignol mistake for living 
people." "Only the capitalists," cried a motorman, "led by 
Wilson, had any say in this treaty. Your Wilson and his 
capitalists are far worse tyrants than the Kaiser ever aspired 
to be in his wildest moments. " " Wilson leads the capitalists 
of the world against Socialism, against socialistic Germany, 
which they fear far more than they ever did a military 
Germany," asserted the Majority-Socialist papers. 

On the other hand there were Germans who stanchly 
defended Wilson, taking an unprejudiced, scientific view 
of the entire question, as they might of the fourth dimension 
or of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy. These were 
apt to bring their fellow-countrymen up with a round turn 
by asserting that Wilson never promised to make peace with 
Germany based on his Fourteen Points. Ah, those Four- 
teen Points! If they had been bayonets I should have 
resembled a sieve long, long before my journey was ended. 

"We Germans can look at the problem from both sides," 
insisted one such open-minded professor, "because we 
are more liberal than the Allies, because we travel, we do 
business in all parts of the world. We have advanced 
beyond the stage of melodrama, of believing that all right, 
all good is on one side and the contrary on the other. 
The Frenchman rarely leaves home, the Englishman never 
changes his mind when he does — ^he has it set in cement 
for safety's sake before he starts. The American is too 

192 



THUS SPEAKS GERMANY 

young to be able to look frankly at a question from both 
sides." 

"Militarism," said a mason who had one crippled leg 
left, yet who chatted with me in an equally friendly manner 
both before and after he had learned my nationality, "was 
our national sport, as football is in England, and whatever 
you play most is in America. Now we have discovered 
that it is not a very pleasant sport. We have a nose full 
of it! Yet we cannot sign this peace. If a man has a 
thousand marks left and a footpad says to him : ' I am going 
to take this away from you. Kindly sign this statement 
to the effect that you are giving it to me freely. I shall 
take it, anyway, but we will both be better off if I have 
your consent,' what would you expect the man to do? 
Let the Allies come to Berlin ! We cannot go to war again, 
but — the people must stand behind the government!" 

Just what he meant by the last assertion was not entirely 
clear; but at least the first half of the assertion was fre- 
quently borne out by little hints that all but escaped the 
eye. Thus, a large bookstore in Berlin bore the meaningful 
placard, "War Literature at Half Price!" 

"From this date" (May 8th), gasped an important Berlin 
daily, "we drop to a fourth-rate power, along with Spain." 
(There were, to be sure, some Spanish suggestions in the 
uncleanliness, the apathy, the run-down condition of build- 
ings that had suffered five years of disrepair, in the emaciated 
beggars one occasionally saw in the Germany of 1919.) 
"With this 'peace' we are down and out; we can never get 
on our feet again. There is not wealth enough in all Ger- 
many to pay this indemnity and still save ourselves. We 
can never recover because we can never buy the raw materials 
we must have to do so. There is nothing left in the country 
with which to pay for these raw stuffs except our labor, 
and we cannot set to work because we have no raw stuffs 
to work with. We are caught in the whirlpool! It is a 

193 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

fallacy to think that we shall save money on our army. 
The army we have to-day costs us far more than the one 
we had when the armistice was signed. If we are required 
to have an army of volunteers only and pay them as good 
wages as they now require . . . to-day one soldier costs 
us more than thirty did under the old system! And what 
soldiers! We shall not be able to compete with the world, 
first of all because the exchange on the mark will make our 
raw materials cost us three times what they do our rivals, 
and then we have these new eight-hour laws and all the 
rest of the advance socialistic program, which they do not 
have in other countries. The Allies should have hunted 
out the guilty individuals, not punish us all as a nation, 
as an incompetent captain punishes his entire company 
because he is too lazy or too stupid to catch the actual 
wrong-doers. In twenty years Germany will have been 
completely destroyed. All the best men will have emi- 
grated. If we try to spend anything for Kultur — that 
excellent heritage of the old regime which our enemies so 
falsified and garbled — ^for working-men's insurance, new 
schools, municipal theaters, even for public baths, the 
Allies will say, *No, we want that money ourselves; you 
owe us that on the old war game you lost.' In that case 
all we can do is to resort to passive resistance" — a strange 
German occupation indeed ! 

The little blond German "ace of aces," credited with 
bringing down some twoscore Allied airmen, hoped to come 
to America and play in a circus. He put little faith in the 
rumor that he might not be received there, and thought that 
if there really was any opposition it could easily be over- 
come by getting one of our large "trusts" to take a financial 
interest in his case. In fact, the chief worry of many Ger- 
mans seemed to be whether or not and how soon they would 
be allowed to come to America — North or South. "Rats 
desert a sinking ship." One man whose intelligence and 

194 




THE RATHAUS, OR CITY HALL, OF POSEN 



THUS SPEAKS GERMANY 

experience warranted attention to his words assured me 
that he belonged to a party that had been working for 
some time in favor of, and that they found a strong senti- 
ment for — making Germany an American colony! I regret 
the inability to report any personal evidence to support his 
statements. 

But if the general tone was lacrymose, notes of a more 
threatening timbre were by no means lacking. "With this 
'peace,'" was one assertion, "we shall have another Thirty 
Years' War and all Europe will go over the brink into the 
abyss." "We Germans got too high," mused a philosophic 
old innkeeper accustomed to take advantage of his pro- 
fession as a listening-post. "He who does is due for a fall, 
and we got it. But France is the haughty one now, and she 
is riding to a cropper. She will rue her overbearing manner, 
for the revanche is here already — on our side this time. 
And if French and Germans ever go to war again there will 
be no prisoner staken ! " "If the Germans are forced to sign 
this 'peace,'" cried a fat Hollander who had lived much 
in Germany, "there will be another war within ten years, 
and all Europe will be destroyed, Holland with the rest. 
Prance certainly, for she is tottering already. If they do 
not sign, we shall all be plunged into anarchy." "We had 
looked to Wilson to bring an end to a century-old situation 
that had grown intolerable," moaned a Berlin merchant. 
"Now we must drill hatred into our children from their 
earliest age, so that in thirty years, when the time is ripe ..." 
What does Germany plan to do with herself, or what is 
left of her, now? Does she wish to remain a republic, to 
return to the Hohenzollems, or to establish a new monarchy 
under some other less sinister dynasty? As with so many 
of the world's problems, the answer depends largely on the 
papers one, or those of whom one made inquiries, read. 
The replies ran the entire gamut. Some asserted that even 
the heads of the socialistic parties have lost only the sym- 
14 195 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

But we must be careful not to let partizan rage, sour 
grapes, obscure the problem. There has certainly been a 
considerable change of feeling in Germany; whether a 
sufficient, a final change remains to be seen. The Germans, 
whatever their faults, are a foresighted and a deliberate 
people. They are scanning the horizon with unprejudiced 
eyes in quest of a well-tested theory of government that 
will fit their problem. Though they seem for the instant 
to be inclined to the left, they are really balancing on the 
ridge between republicanism and monarchy, perhaps a 
more responsible monarchy than the one they have just 
cast off, and it will probably not take much to tip them 
definitely to either side. In the offing, too, Bolshevism 
is always hovering ; not so close, perhaps, as the Germans 
themselves fear, or are willing to have the world believe, 
but distinctly menacing, for all that. In things poHtical 
at least the German is no idealist. Of the rival systems of 
government he has an eye chiefly to the material advantages. 
Which one will bring him the most Kultur, in the shape 
of all those things ranging from subsidized opera to municipal 
baths with which the Kaiser regime upholstered his slavery ? 
Above all, which will give him the earliest and surest oppor- 
tunity to get back to work and to capitalize undisturbed 
his world-famed diligence? Those are his chief questions. 
I never heard in all Germany the hint of a realization that 
a republic may be the best form of government because 
it gives every citizen more or less of a chance to climb to 
the topmost rung of the ladder. But I did now and then 
see encouraging signs that the masses are beginning to 
realize that a people is responsible for the actions of its 
government just as a business man is responsible for his 
clerk's errors — and that is already a long step forward for 
Germany. 




'BISMARCK," TYPICAL OF ALL THE GERMAN STATUES IN POZNAN TO-DAY 




RUSSIAN WOMEN OF THE "BATTALION OF DEATH" 



SENTENCED TO AMPUTATION 

THE terms of the Peace Treaty having broken upon 
Berlin without arousing any of the excited scenes I 
had expected, I decided to go away from there. General 
apathy might be ruling in the provinces also, but at least 
I would be "on my own" if anything happened, and not 
where I could dart under the protecting wing of the Ally- 
housing Adlon at the first signs of storm. I laid a plan 
that promised to kill two birds with one stone. I would 
jump to the far eastern border of the Empire, to a section 
which Paris had just decreed should be handed over to the 
Poles, and I would walk from there into a section which 
the Poles had already taken. In other words, I would 
examine side by side an amputated member and one which 
the consultation of international doctors about the operating- 
table on which Germany lay had marked for amputation. 
Luckily I took the wrong train on the teeming Friedrichs- 
strasse Bahnhof platform next morning, or I should have 
been sent back before reaching my goal. I learned jUst 
in time to drop off there that travelers into Polish territory 
must have their passports viseed in Frankfurt-am-Oder. 
There was a considerable gathering of nervous petitioners 
about the door of the haughty German officer who repre- 
sented the Empire in this matter, at one of the huge bar- 
racks on the outskirts of town. But the delay was not 
correspondingly long, thanks not only to the efficient system 

199 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

of his office, but to the fact that many of the applicants 
remained only long enough to hear him dismiss them with 
an uncompromising "No!" All men of military age — and 
in the Germany of 19 19 that seemed to mean every male 
between puberty and senility — ^were being refused per- 
mission to enter the amputated province, whether they 
were of Polish or German origin. My own case was dif- 
ferent. The officer scowled a bit as the passport I laid 
before him revealed my nationality, but he stamped it 
quickly, as if in haste to be done with an unpleasant duty. 
Whether or not this official right of exit from the Empire 
included permission to return was a question which he 
curtly dismissed as no affair of his. Evidently I was burn- 
ing my bridges behind me. 

Frankfurt-am-Oder pulsated with soldiers, confirming 
the impression that reigned in khaki-clad circles at Coblenz 
that the German army had turned its face toward the east. 
Food seemed somewhat less scarce than in the capital. A 
moderately edible dinner cost me only eight marks. In 
the market-place, however, the stalls and bins were patheti- 
cally near to emptiness. A new annoyance — one that was 
destined to pursue me during all the rest of my travels in 
Germany — ^here first became personal. It was the scarcity 
of matches. In the days to come that mere hour's search 
for a single box of uncertain, smoke-barraging Streichholzer 
grew to be a pleasant memory. Not far from the city 
was one of those many camps of Russian prisoners, rationed 
now by American doughboys, some of whose inmates had 
nearly five years of German residence to their discredit. If 
the testimony of many constant observers was trustworthy, 
they dreaded nothing so much as the day when they must 
turn their backs on American plenitude and regain their 
own famished, disrupted land. True, they were still 
farmed out to labor for their enemies. But they seldom 
strained themselves with toil, and in exchange were they 

200 



SENTENCED TO AMPUTATION 

not growing efficient in baseball and enhancing their Tataric 
beauty with the silk hats and red neckties furnished by an 
all-providing Red Cross? 

The station platform of Frankfurt, strewn pellmell with 
Polish refugees and their disheveled possessions, recalled 
the halcyon days of Ellis Island. A "mixed" train of 
leisurely temperament wandered away at last toward the 
trunk line to the east which I had fortunately not taken 
that morning. Evidently one must get off the principal 
arteries of travel to hear one's fellow-passengers express 
themselves frankly and freely. At any rate, there was 
far more open discussion of the question of the hour during 
that jolting thirty miles than I had ever heard in a day on 
sophisticated express trains. 

"The idea," began an old man of sixty or more, apropos 
of nothing but the thought that had evidently been running 
through his head at sight of the fertile acres about us, "of 
expecting us to surrender this, one of the richest sections 
of the Fatherland, and to those improvident Poles of all 
people! They are an intelligent race — ^I have never been 
one of those who denied them intelligence. But they can 
never govern themselves; history has proved that over 
and over again. In my twenty-three years' residence in 
Upper Silesia I have seen how the laborers' houses have 
improved, how they have thrived and reached a far higher 
plane of culture under German rule. A Polish government 
would only bring them down to their natural depths again. 
They will never treat the working-man as fairly, as gener- 
ously as we have. 

"But," he continued, suddenly, with increased heat, 
"we will not see the Fatherland torn to pieces by a band of 
wolfish, envious enemies. We wiU fight for our rights! 
We cannot abandon our faithful fellow-countrymen, our 
genuine German brethren, to be driven from their homes 
or misruled by these wretched Poles. It would be unworthy 

20I 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

of oiir German blood! There will be a Burgerkrieg — a 
peasants' war, with every man fighting for his own sacred 
possessions, before we will allow German territory to be 
taken from us. I will sacrifice my entire family rather 
than allow the Fatherland to be dismembered." 

Our fellow-passengers listened to this tirade of testy old 
age with the curious apathy of himger or indifference which 
seemed to have settled upon the nation. Now and then one 
or two of them nodded approval of the sentiments expressed; 
occasionally they threw in a few words of like tenor. But 
on the whole there was little evidence of an enthusiasm 
for rescuing their "genuine German brethren" that prom- 
ised to go the length of serious personal sacrifice. 

All Germany was in bloom, chiefly with the white of early 
fruit-trees, giving the landscape a maidenly gaiety that 
contrasted strangely with the fimereal gloom within the car. 
Gangs of women were toiling with shovels along the rail- 
way embankment. The sandy flatlands, supporting little 
but scrubby spruce forests, gave way at length to a rich 
black soil that heralded the broad fertile granary which 
Germany had been called upon to surrender. Barefoot 
women and children, interspersed with only a small per- 
centage of men, stood erect from their labors and gazed 
oxlike after the nmibHng train. Here and there great 
fields of colza, yellow as the saffron robe of a Buddhist priest, 
stretched away toward the horizon. The plant furnished, 
according to one of my fellow-passengers, a very tolerable 
Ersatz oil. Fruit-trees in their white spring garments, their 
trunks carefully whitewashed as a protection against 
insects, lined every highway. Other trees had been 
trimmed down to mere trunks, like those of Brittany and 
La Vendee in France, as if they, too, had been called upon 
to sacrifice all but life itself to the struggle that had 
ended so disastrously. 

In the helter-skelter of finding seats in the express that 

202 



SENTENCED TO AMPUTATION 

picked us up at the jiinction I had lost sight of the belligerent 
old man. A husband and wife who had formed part of his 
audience, however, found place in the same compartment as 
I. For a long time I attempted to draw them into con- 
versation by acting as suspiciously as possible. I took 
copious notes, snapped my kodak at everything of interest 
on the station platforms, and finally took to reading an 
English newspaper. All in vain. They stared at me with 
that frankness of the continental European, but they would 
not be moved to words, not even at sight of the genuine 
cigar I ostentatiously extracted from my knapsack. At 
length I gave up the attempt and turned to them with some 
casual remark, bringing in a reference to my nationality 
at the first opportunity. 

"Ah," boasted the woman, "I told my husband that you 
looked like an EngHshman, or something. But he insisted 
you were a Dane." 

"I wonder if the old fellow got a seat, and some one 
else to Hsten to him — with his Burgerkrieg," mused the 
husband, a moment later. "We Germans have little to 
boast of, in governing ourselves. Germany should be 
divided up between Belgitmi, France, and England, or be 
given an EngHsh king. " Apparently he was quite serious, 
though he may have been indulging in that crude sarcasm 
to which the German sometimes abandons himself and 
which he thinks nicely veiled. "We are not ripe for a 
republic. What we are evidently trying to do is to make 
ourselves a super-repubHc in one jump. The Socialists 
were against the Kaiser because he put on too much pomp, 
but we Germans need that kind of a ruler, some one who 
will be stem but kind to us, like a father. The Kaiser 
himself was not to blame. At least half, if not a majority, 
of the people want him back — or at least another one like 
him." 

"We surely will have our Kaiser back again, sooner or 

203 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

later," cried the woman, in a tone like that of a religious 
fanatic. 

Just then, however, the pair reached their station and 
there was no opportunity to get her to elaborate her text. 
They shooks hands heartily, wished me a "Gluckliche 
Reise,'^ and disappeared into the night. 

Sunset and dusk had been followed by an almost full 
moon that made the evening only a fainter replica of the 
perfect cloudless day. Toward nine, however, the sky 
became overcast and the darkness impenetrable. This was 
soon the case inside as well as out, for during an unusually 
protracted stop at a small station a guard marched the 
length of the train, putting out all its lights. It seemed 
we were approaching the "danger zone." I had been 
laboring under the delusion that the armistice which Ger- 
many had concluded with her enemies was in force on all 
fronts. Not at all. The Poles, it seemed, were intrenched 
from six hundred to three thousand yards away all along 
this section of the line. They had been there since January, 
soon after the province of Posen had revolted against 
German rule. Almost every night they fired upon the trains, 
now and then even with artillery. Sometimes the line was 
impassable. German troops, of course, were facing them. 
Trench raids were of almost nightly occurrence; some of 
them had developed into real battles. 

Now and again as we hurled on through the night there 
were sounds of distant firing. It was only at Nakel, how- 
ever, that we seemed in any personal danger. There the 
Poles were barely six hundred yards away, and between the 
time we halted at the station and got under way again at 
least a hundred shots were fired, most of them the rat-a-tat 
of machine-guns and all of them so close at hand that we 
unconsciously ducked our heads. The train apparently 
escaped unscathed, however, and two stations farther on 

the guard lighted it up again, with the announcement that 

204 



SENTENCED TO AMPUTATION 

danger was over. We rumbled on into Bromberg, where I 
descended toward midnight. Soldiers held the station 
gate and subjected every traveler — or, more exactly, his 
papers — to a careful scrutiny before permitting him to pass. 
My own credentials they accepted more readily than those 
of many of their fellow-countrymen, some of whom were 
herded into a place of detention. As I stepped out through 
the gate, another soldier thrust into my hand an Ausweis 
permitting me to remain on the streets after dark, for 
Bromberg was officially in a state of siege. 

When I entered the nearest hotel I found that unofficially 
in the same condition. A drunken army officer, who was 
the exact picture of what Allied cartoonists would have us 
believe all his class, was prancing about the hotel office with 
drawn sword, roaring angrily and threatening to spit on 
his needle-pointed saber every one in the room. The pos- 
sible victims were two half -grown hotel clerks, ridiculous 
in their professional evening dress, and a thin, mottled-faced 
private soldier, who cowered speechless in different comers. 
I was inside before I noticed the disturbance, and pride 
would not permit me to retreat. I took station near a 
convenient stool and studied the exact degree of uncertainty 
of the bully's legs, with a view to future defense. But for 
some reason he took no notice of me and at length lurched 
out again into the street, cursing as he went. 

I owe it to the goddess of truth to state that this was the 
one and only case I ever personally saw of a German officer 
living up to the popular Allied conception of his caste. 
On the contrary, I found the great majority of them quiet, 
courteous and gentlemanly to a high degree, with by no 
means so large a sprinkling of the "roughneck" variety as 
was to be found among our own officers in Europe. Which 
does not mean that they were not often haughty beyond 
reason, nor that they may not sometimes have concealed 
brutal instincts beneath their polished exteriors. But 

205 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

while we are on the subject, let me read into the record the 
testimony of their own fellow-countrymen, particularly 
that of many a man who served under them. 

"Our active officers," would be the composite answer 
of all those I questioned on the subject, "were excellent. 
They still had something adel about them — something of 
the genuine nobility of the old knights from which the 
caste sprang. Their first and foremost thought was the 
fatherly care of their men — rendered with a more or less 
haughty aloofness, to be sure — that was necessary to dis- 
cipline — but a genuine solicitude for the welfare of their 
soldiers. Above all" — and here, perhaps, is the chief point 
of divergence between them and our own officers of the same 
class — "they were rarely or never self-seeking. Our reserve 
officers, on the other hand, were by no means of the same 
high character. One so often felt the Kaufmann — the soul 
of a merchant underneath. Many of them were just 
plain rascals, who stole the presents that came addressed 
to their soldiers and looted for their own personal benefit. 
Then there were many who, though honest and well- 
meaning enough, had not the preparation required for so 
important an office. They were teachers, or scholars, or 
young students, who did not realize that a quiet voice is 
more commanding than a noisy one. The great drawback 
of our military system, of our national life, in fact, under 
the monarchy, was the impenetrable wall that separated 
us into the compartments of caste. Old Feldwebels who had 
served in the army for twenty years were refused positions 
which they could have filled to excellent advantage, in 
war-time, because they were not considered in the "officer 
class"; and there were set over them men half their own 
age, school-boy officers, in some cases, who were barely 
eighteen, and who naturally could not have the training 
and experience which are required of a lieutenant. Sixty 
per cent, of our active officers were slain, and many others 

206 



SENTENCED TO AMPUTATION 

were not able to return to the line. Only 30 per cent, of 
our reserve officers were killed, with the result that before 
the war ended a man was lucky to have a superior whom he 
could honor and imquestioningly obey." 

It was in Bromberg that I came into personal contact 
with more of the class in question than I had in any other 
city of the Empire. Not only were soldiers more ntmierous 
here, but I purposely "butted in" upon a half-dozen military 
offices, ostensibly to make sure that my papers were in 
order, really to feel out the sentiment on the peace terms 
and measure the sternness of martial law. But though I 
deliberately emphasized my nationality, not once did an 
officer show any resentment at my presence. In fact, 
most of them saw me to the door at the end of the interview, 
and bowed me out with all the ceremony of their exacting 
social code. If the verdict that had just been issued in 
Paris had burst like a shell among them, they showed no 
evidence of panic. The official day's work went deliber- 
ately on, and the only comment on the peace terms I suc- 
ceeded in arousing was a quiet, uncompromising "Quite 
unacceptable, of course." 

The city itself was as astonishingly placid in the midst 
of what an outsider woiild have supposed to be exciting 
times. Being not only in a state of siege, but having just 
heard that it was soon to transfer its allegiance to another 
race, one was justified in expecting a town as large as 
Trenton or San Antonio to show at least some ripples on 
its surface. I looked for them in vain. It was Sunday, 
just the day for popular demonstrations in Germany, yet 
not only was there no sign whatever of rejoicing among 
the Polish population, but nothing even suggesting the 
uprising of protest among the German residents which had 
been so loudly prophesied. The place resembled some 
New England factory town on the same day of the week. 
Groups of Polish-looking young men, somewhat uncom- 

207 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

fortable and stiff in their Sunday best, lounged on the street- 
corners, ogHng the plump Polish girls on their way to 
church. Strollers seemed interested only in keeping to the 
shaded side of the street, youths and children only in their 
games. Tramways rumbled slowly along as usual — and, 
before I forget it, their female conductors wore breeches; 
such shops as were habitually open on Sunday seemed to 
be doing their customary amount of business. The whole 
town was as staid, heavy, and unenthusiastic as the German 
character. 

In the face of a wide divergence of opinion among its 
own inhabitants it was hard for a stranger to decide which 
of the two races predominated in Bromberg. The Germans 
asserted that only 40 per cent, of the population were 
Poles, and that many of them preferred to see things remain 
as they were. The Poles defied any one to find more than 
twenty Germans among every hundred inhabitants, or to 
point out a single member of their race who sincerely wished 
to keep his allegiance to the Fatherland. Street and shop 
signs were nearly all in German, but that may have been 
due to legal requirement. The rank and file of the populace 
had a Polish look, yet they seemed to speak German by 
choice. Moreover, there is but scant difference of appearance 
between Teutons and Poles, particularly when they have 
lived their entire lives together in the same environment. 
On the wall of a church I dropped into during morning 
service there were five columns of names, forty-five each, 
of the men who had "Patriotically sacrificed their lives 
for a grateful Fatherland." At least one half of them ended 
in "ski," and in one column alone I counted thirty unques- 
tionably Polish names. But then, it was a Catholic church, 
so there you are again. Perhaps the most unbiased testi- 
mony of all was the fact that the little children playing in 
the park virtually all spoke Polish. 

I drifted into conversation with an intelligent young 

208 



SENTENCED TO AMPUTATION 

mechanic taking his Sunday ease in a Bierhalle. He turned 
out to be a Pole. As soon as he was convinced of my 
identity he shed his mask of commonplace remarks and 
fell to talking frankly and sincerely. I do not speak 
Polish, hence the rulers of Bromberg might have been 
startled to hear the statements that were poured into my 
ear in their own tongue. Yet my companion discussed 
their shortcomings and the war they had waged, quite 
openly, with far less circumspection than a similar criticism 
of the powers that be would have required in France or the 
United States at the same date. 

"You don't hear much Polish on the streets, do you?" 
he began. "But if I could take you into the homes you 
would find that the street-door is the dividing line between 
the two tongues. In the family circle we all stick to the old 
language, and the memory of the ancient nation that is 
just being resurrected has never been obscured. We are 
not exactly forbidden to speak Polish in public, but if we do 
we are quite likely to be thumped on the head, or kicked 
in the back, or called "dirty Polacks." Besides, it is never 
to our advantage to admit that we are Poles. You never 
know, when you meet a man, whether he is one or not. I 
feel sure the waiter there is one, for instance, yet you see 
he carefully pretends to understand nothing but German. 
We are treated with unfair discrimination from the cradle 
to the grave. When I first went to public school I could 
not speak German, and there was hardly a day that a gang 
of little Deutschen did not beat me to tears. I used to go 
home regularly with lumps as big as walnuts on my head. 
Even the teacher whipped us for speaking Polish. When 
it came time to go to work we could only get the hardest 
and most poorly paid jobs. The railways, the government 
offices, all the better trades were closed to us. If we applied 
for work at a German factory, the first thing they asked 
was whether we were Catholics and Poles. In the courts 

209 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

a "ski" on the end of a name means a double sentence. 
Our taxes were figured far more strictly than those of the 
Germans. In the army we are given the dirtiest jobs and 
most of the punishments. At the front we were thrown 
into the most dangerous positions. 

"The Germans could have won the Poles over if they 
had done away with these unfair differences and treated 
us as equals. They are an efficient people and some of 
their ways are better than our ways, but they cannot 
get rid of their arrogance and their selfishness. They are 
short-sighted. I spent four years at the front, yet I never 
once fired at the enemy, but into the air or into the ground. 
The majority of Poles did the same thing. You can imagine 
the ammunition that was wasted. There is not much 
work at home, yet you will not find one Pole in a hundred* 
of military age in the German volunteer army. You see 
many of them in uniform on the streets here — all those red- 
headed young fellows are Poles — ^but that is because they 
are still illegally held under the old conscription act. Short- 
sightedness again, for if trouble ever starts, the garrison 
will eat itself up without any one outside bothering with it. 
No Pole of military age can get into the province of Posen, 
not even if he was bom there. In Berlin there are thou- 
sands of young Poles wandering around in uniform, half 
starved, with nothing to do, yet who are not allowed to 
come home. 

"No, there has been very little mixture* of the two races. 
Intermarriage is rare. I know only one case of it among my 
own acquaintances. It is not the German government 
that is opposed to it — on the contrary — but the Church, 
and Polish sentiment. The Catholics are against the old 
order of things and want a republic; it is the Protestants 
who want the Kaiser restored" — here one detected a re- 
ligious bias that perhaps somewhat obscured the truth. 
"The old-German party wants to fight to the end. If 

2IO 



SENTENCED TO AMPUTATION 

they had their say Poland would never get the territory 
that has been awarded her. Sign? Of course they will 
sign. They are merely stalling, in the hope of having 
the blow softened. Nor will the government that accepts 
the treaty be overthrown. The Social Democrats are 
strong, very strong; they will sign and still live. The 
Poles? With very few exceptions they are eager to join the 
new empire. Paderewski has become a national hero. Es- 
pecially are the peasants strong for the change. For one 
thing, it will fatten their pocketbooks. The Germans 
pumped them dry of everything. They had to deliver so 
many eggs per hen, buying them if the fowls did not lay 
enough. Or the guilty hen had to be turned over for 
slaughter. It usually went into the officers' messes. Each 
farmer was allowed only one rooster. The same exactions 
ruled among all the flocks and herds. Thousands of girls 
were sent into the pine forests to gather pitch for turpentine. 
No, I do not believe they were mistreated against their 
will, except perhaps in a few individual cases, no more 
than would happen anywhere under similar circumstances. 
Nor do I think the Germans wantonly destroyed trees by 
'ringing' them. What they did, probably, was tap them 
too carelessly and too deep. 

"All this talk about Bolshevism overspreading Germany 
is nonsense. The Bolshevists are poor, simple fellows 
who have nothing to lose and perhaps something to gain, 
many of them Chinese laborers brought to Russia in the 
time of the Czar, fatalists who think nothing of throwing 
their lives away — or of taking those of others. The other 
day the Bolshevists decreed in one of the cities they have 
captured that the bourgeois should move out into the out- 
skirts and the proletariat take all the fine houses. Then 
they named a 'poor day' during which any one who had no 
shoes could go into all the houses and take a pair wherever 
he found two pairs. Can you imagine the orderly, plodding 

15 211 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

Germans subscribing to any such doctrine as that? I cer- 
tainly cannot, for I have hved all my life among them and 
I know how they worship OrdnUng and Gemutlichkeit. 

"Yes, we have several Polish newspapers published here 
in Bromberg. But even if you could read them it would 
not be worth your while, for they do not mean what they 
say. They are doctored and padded and censored by 
the German authorities until the only reason we read them 
is for the local gossip of our friends and acquaintances. 
If it were not Sunday I would take you to meet the editor 
of one of them, and you would find that he speaks quite 
differently from what he writes in his paper, once he is 
sure he is not talking to a German spy." 

The mechanic told me all this without once showing the 
slightest evidence of prejudice^ or bitterness against the 
oppressors of his race. He treated the matter with that 
academic aloofness, that absence of personal feeling, which 
I had so often been astounded to see the Germans themselves 
display toward the woes that had come upon them. Per- 
haps a lifelong grievance grows numb with years, perhaps 
it is less painful when swaddled in calm detachment, per- 
haps, the temperamental Polish character takes on a phleg- 
matic coating in a German environment. At any rate, all 
those groups of youths that lounged on the street-corners, 
ogling the girls as they passed on their way homeward 
from church, had a get-along-with-as-little-trouble-as-pos- 
sible-seeing-we-can't-avoid-it manner toward the still some- 
what arrogant Germans that made Bromberg outwardly a 
picture of peace and contentment. 

The half-dozen Teuton residents with whom I talked 
seemed rather apathetic toward the sudden change in their 
fortunes. The shopkeepers, with one exception, announced 
their intention of continuing business in Bromberg, even if it 
became necessary to adopt Polish citizenship. The excep- 
tion was of the impression that they would be driven out, 

212 



SENTENCED TO AMPUTATION 

and was not yet making any plans for the future. A station 
guard, on the other hand, denounced the decision of Paris 
with a genuine Prussian wrath. "Every railway employee 
is armed, he asserted, "and die Polacken will not get any- 
thing that belongs to the Fatherland without a struggle. 
It is absurd," he vociferated, "to expect that we will sur- 
render a genuine German city like Bromberg to a lot of 
improvident wastrels. Let them keep the part about 
Posen and south of it; there the Poles are in the majority. 
But here" — as usual, it seemed, the section to which they 
were entitled was somewhere else. 

A lawyer whom I found sunning himself on a park bench 
before the fantastic bronze fountain discussed the problem 
more quietly, but with no less heat. 

"You Americans," he perorated, "the whole Allied group, 
do not understand the problem in its full significance. We 
look upon the Poles very much as you do upon your negroes. 
They have much the same shiftlessness, much the same 
tendency to revert to the semi-savagery out of which we 
Germans have lifted them. Now just imagine, for the 
moment, that you had been starved to submission in a 
war with, say, Mexico, Japan, and England. Suppose a 
so-called 'peace conference'" made up entirely of your 
enemies, and sitting, say, in Canada, decreed that Missis- 
sippi, Florida, Alabama — that half a dozen of your most 
fertile Southern states must be turned over to the negroes, 
to form part of a new negro nation. It is possible that 
your people in the North, whom the problem did not directly 
touch, might consent to the arrangement. But do you for 
a moment think that your hot-blooded Southerners, the 
white men who would have to live in that negro nation or 
escape with what they could carry with them, would accept 
the decision without springing to arms even though it was 
stgned by a dozen Northerners? That is exactly our case 
here, and whether or not this alleged Peace Treaty is accepted 

213 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

by the government in Berlin, the Germans of the East 
will not see themselves despoiled without a struggle." 

That evening I attended an excellent performance of 
Siidermann's Die Ehre in the subsidized municipal theater. 
Tickets were even cheaper than in Coblenz, none of them as 
high as four marks, even with war tax, poor tax, and "ward- 
robe." The house was crowded with the serious-minded 
of all classes, Poles as well as Germans; the actors were of 
higher histrionic ability than the average American town 
of the size of Bromberg sees once a year. Yet equally 
splendid performances were offered here at these slight 
prices all the year round. As I strolled hotelward with that 
pleasant sensation of satisfaction that comes from an evening 
of genuine entertainment, I could not but wonder whether 
this, and those other undeniable advantages of German 
Kultur, whatever sins might justly be charged against it, 
would be kept up after the Poles had taken Bromberg into 
their own keeping. 

As to the walking trip through these eastern provinces 
which I had planned, fate was once more against me. I 
might, to be sure, have set out on foot toward the region 
already amputated from the Empire, but in the course 
of an hour I should have had the privilege of walking back 
again. The German-Polish front was just six kilometers 
from Bromberg, and a wandering stranger would have had 
exactly the same chance of crossing its succession of trenches 
as of entering Germany from France a year before. The 
one and only way of reaching the province of Posen was 
by train from the village of Kreuz, back along the railway 
by which I had come. 

The place had all the appearance of an international 
frontier, a frontier hastily erected and not yet in efficient 
running order. Arrangements for examining travelers and 
baggage consisted only of an improvised fence along the 
station platform, strewn pellmell with a heterogeneous 

214 



SENTENCED TO AMPUTATION 

throng bound in both directions, and their multifarious 
coffers and bundles. The soldiers who patrolled the line 
of demarkation with fixed bayonets were callow, thin-faced 
youths, or men past middle age who had plainly reached 
the stage of uselessness as combat troops. All wore on 
their collars the silver oak-leaves of the recently formed 
"frontier guard." Their manner toward the harassed 
travelers was either brutal or cringingly friendly. The 
Germans in civilian garb who examined passports and 
baggage were cantankerous and gruff, as if they resented 
the existence of a frontier where the Fatherland had never 
admitted that a frontier existed. They vented their wrath 
especially against men of military age who wished to enter 
Polish territory — and their interpretation of their duties 
in that respect was by no means charitable. Among others, 
a wretched little dwarf past fifty, whom a glance sufficed 
to recognize as useless from a military point of view, even 
had his papers not been stamped with the official Un- 
taugUch, was wantonly turned back. Many a family 
was left only the choice of abandoning the attempt to 
reach its home or of leaving its adult male members behind. 
The churls allowed me to pass readily enough, but 
rescinded their action a moment later. Once beyond the 
barrier, I had paused to photograph the pandemonium that 
reigned about it. A lieutenant bellowed and a group of 
soldiers and officials quickly swarmed about me. Did I 
not know that photography was forbidden at the front? 
I protested that the station scenes of Kreuz could scarcely 
be called military information. What of that? I knew 
that it was within the zone of the armies, did I not ? Rules 
were rules; it was not the privilege of every Tom, Dick, 
and Harry to interpret them to his own liking. A lean, 
hawk-faced civilian, who seemed to be in command, ordered 
me to open my kodak and confiscated the film it contained. 
If I set great store by the pictures on it, he would have it 

215 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

developed by the military authorities and let me have those 
that proved harmless, upon my return. I thanked him 
for his leniency and strolled toward the compartment I 
had chosen. Before I had reached it he called me back. 

"Let me see your papers again," he demanded, in a far 
gruffer tone. 

He glanced casually at them, thrust them into a pocket 
of his coat, and snapped angrily: "Get your baggage off 
the train! I am not going to let you through." 

It was plain that he was acting from personal rather than 
official motives. Probably he considered my failure to 
raise my hat and to smile the sycophant smile with which my 
fellow-passengers addressed him as an affront to his high 
Prussian caste. Fortunately he was not alone in command. 
A more even-tempered official without his dyspeptic lean- 
ness beckoned him aside and whispered in his ear. Perhaps 
he called his attention to the importance of my credentials 
from Wilhelmstrasse. At any rate, he surrendered my 
papers after some argument, with an angry shrug of the 
shoulders, and his less hungry-looking companion brought 
them back to me. 

"It has all been arranged," he smirked. "You may take 
the train." 

This was still manned by a German crew. For every 
car that left their territory, however, the Poles required 
that one of the same class and condition be delivered to 
them in exchange. Several long freight-trains, loaded 
from end to end with potatoes, rumbled past us on the 
parallel track. Two hundred thousand tons of tubers 
were sent to Germany each month in exchange for coal. 
It was at that date the only commercial intercourse between 
the two countries, and explained why potatoes were the one 
foodstuff of comparative abundance even in Berlin. At 
Biala the station guards were Polish, but there was little 
indeed to distinguish them from those of Kreuz and Brom- 

216 



SENTENCED TO AMPUTATION 

berg. Their uniforms, their rifles, every detail of their 
equipment, were German, except that some of them wore 
the square and rather cliimsy-looking PoHsh cap or had 
decorated their round, red-banded fatigue bonnets with 
the silver double-eagle of the resurrected empire. Many 
were without even this insignia of their new allegiance, and 
only the absence of oak-leaves on their collars showed that 
they were no longer soldiers of the Fatherland. 

We halted at Wronki for two hours, which made our 
departure three hours later, for clocks and watches were 
turned ahead to correspond with Polish time. Frontier 
formalities were even more leisurely and disorganized than 
they had been in Kreuz. The Poles seemed to have some- 
thing of the amiable but headless temperament of the French. 
Their officers, too, in their impressive new uniforms with 
broad red or yellow bands, and their rattling sabers, bore 
a certain resemblance to children on Christmas morning 
that did not help to expedite matters under their jurisdiction. 
They were a bit less "snappy" than the more experienced 
Germans, somewhat inclined to strut and to flirt, and there 
were suggestions in their manner that they might not have 
been horrified at the offer of a tip. When at length my 
turn had come they found my credentials unsatisfactory. 
Why had they not been viseed by the Polish consul in Berlin, 
as well as by the Germans at Frankfurt? I had never 
dreamed that Berlin boasted a Polish consul. Indeed! 
Who, then, did I suppose handled the interests of their 
nation there? However, it was all right. As an American 
and a fellow-Ally they would let me pass. But I must 
promise to report at a certain office in Posen within twenty- 
four hours of my arrival. 

Barefoot boys were selling huge slabs of bread and gener- 
ous lengths of sausage through the car windows. All things 
are relative, and to the travelers from Germany these 
"ticket-free" viands of doubtful origin seemed a kingly 

217 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

repast. With every mile forward now it was easier to 
understand why the loss of the province of Posen had been 
so serious a blow to the hungry Empire. Here were no 
arid, sandy stretches, but an endless expanse of rich black 
loam, capable of feeding many times its rather sparse 
population. If it had been "pumped dry" by the former 
oppressors, it was already well on the road to recovery. 
Wheat, com, and potatoes covered the flat plains to the 
horizons on either hand. Cattle and sheep were by no 
means rare; pigs, goats, ducks, and chickens flocked about 
every village and farm-house, evidently living in democratic 
equality with the human inhabitants. There were other 
suggestions that we were approaching the easy-going East. 
Men in high Russian boots sauntered behind their draft 
animals with the leisureliness of those who know the world 
was not built in a day, nor yet in a year. Churches of 
Oriental aspect, with steep roofs that were still not Gothic, 
broke the sameness of the prevailing German architecture. 
There was something softly un-Occidental in the atmosphere 
of the great city into which we rumbled at sunset, a city 
which huge new sign-boards on the station platform stri- 
dently announced was no longer Posen, but "Poznan." 



XI 

AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 
(Posen wider the Poles) 

THE same spirit that had led the Poles to impress so 
forcibly upon the traveler the fact that the city in 
which he had just arrived was now called Poznan (pro- 
nounced Poznanya) had manifested itself in a thousand 
other changes. In so far as time had permitted, every 
official sign-board had already been rendered into Polish 
and the detested German ones cast into outer darkness. 
Only those familiar with the Slavic tongue of the new 
rulers could have guessed what all those glitteringly new 
enameled placards that adorned the still Boche-featured 
station were commanding them to do or not to do. Every 
street in town had been baptized into the new faith and 
gaily boasted that fact on every comer. For a time the 
names had been announced in both languages, as in Metz; 
but a month or so before my arrival the radicals had pre- 
vailed and the older placards had been abolished. True, 
in most cases the new ones were merely translations of the 
old. But what did it help the German resident who had 
neglected to learn Polish to know that the "Alte Markt" 
was still the "Old Market" so long as he could not recognize 
it under the new designation of "Stary Rynek"? Imagine, 
if you can, the sensation of waking up some morning to 
find that Main Street has become Ulica Glowna, or to 
discover that the street-car you had always taken no 

longer runs to Forest Park but to Ogrott Lass. 

219 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

Nothing but the few things that defied quick change, 
such as post-boxes or names deeply cut into stone facades, 
had escaped the all-embracing renovation. Indeed, many 
of these had been deliberately defaced. The cast-iron 
"Haltestelle der Strassenbahn " high up on the trolley- 
supports had been daubed with red paint, though they 
were still recognizable to motormen and would-be pas- 
sengers. Many business houses had followed the official 
lead, and private signs were more apt than not to have 
the German words that had once called attention to the 
excellence of the wares within crudely effaced or changed 
to the new tongue. Sometimes it was not merely the 
language that had been altered, but the whole tenor of the 
proprietor's allegiance. A popular underground beer-hall 
in the heart of town was no longer the "Bismarck Tunnel," 
but the "Tunel Wilsona." German trucks thundering by 
on their iron tires bore the white eagle of Poland instead 
of the black Prussian bird of prey. German newspapers 
were still published, but as the streets they mentioned 
were nowhere to be found in all Poznan, their advertisements 
and much of their news were rather pointless. It gave me a 
curiously helpless feeling to find myself for the first time in 
years unable to guess a word of the language about me. 
Fortunately all Poznan still spoke German. Only once 
during my stay there did I find myself hampered by my 
ignorance of Polish — when a theater-ticket office proved to 
be in charge of a pair recently arrived from Warsaw. On 
more than one occasion my advances were received coldly, 
sometimes with scowls. But a reply was always forth- 
coming, and whenever I announced myself an American, 
who spoke the less welcome of the two tongues by necessity 
rather than by choice, apology and friendly overtures im- 
mediately followed. 

Having effaced the lingual reminders of their late oppres- 
sors, the Poznanians had proceeded to pay their respects 

220 



AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 

to the bronze heroes they had left behind. The Germans, 
as is their custom, had Uttered the pubHc squares with 
statues of their chief sword-brandishers, in gigantic size — 
tender reminders to the conquered people of the blessings 
that had been forced upon them. The downfall of these 
had been sudden and unceremonious. Some had descended 
so hastily that the allegorical figures at their feet had suffered 
the fate so often overtaking faithful henchmen of the fallen 
mighty. The stone image of an old woman representing 
"Sorrow" looked doubly sorrowful with broken nose, legs, 
and fingers. Kaiser Friedrich, Doctor Bismarck with his 
panacea of "blood and iron," the world-famed Wilhelm, 
had all left behind them imposing pedestals, like university 
chairs awaiting exponents of newer and more lasting doc- 
trines. Here and there a statue had remained, because it 
was Polish, but these were few and small and tucked away 
into the more obscure comers. 

Next to its change of tongue the most striking feature 
of the new Poznan was its military aspect. The streets 
swarmed with soldiers even during the day; in the evening 
the chief gathering-places became pulsating seas of field 
gray. For it was still the garb of their former servitude 
that clothed the vast majority of these warriors of the 
reborn nation. The silver double-eagle on his service-faded 
cap was all that was needed to turn a wearer of the German 
uniform into a soldier of Poland. Many still wore their 
''Gott mit Uns'' belt-buckles and their Prussian buttons. 
A scattering minority, officers for the most part, were con- 
spicuous in the full new Polish imiform — double-breasted, 
with a forest-green tinge. The high, square cap, distinctive 
only of the province of Poznan, was more widely in evidence; 
the less cumbersome headgear of military visitors from 
Warsaw or Galizia now and then broke the red-banded 
monotony. But the only universal sign of new fealty 
was the silver double-eagle. This gleamed everywhere. 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

Men in civilian garb wore it on their hats or in their coat 
lapels; women adorned their bodices with it; boys and girls 
proudly displayed it in some conspicuous position. It 
fluttered on a thousand banners; it bedecked every Polish 
shop-front; it stared from the covers of newly appeared 
books, pamphlets, music-sheets in the popular tongue; 
the very church spires had replaced their crosses with it. 
One could buy the resurrected insignia, of any size or ma- 
terial, in almost any shop — providing one could produce 
"legitimation papers" or other proof that it would not be 
used to disguise a German as a Pole. 

An over-abundance of swords tended to give the new 
army a comic-opera aspect, but this detail was offset by the 
genuine military bearing of all but a few of the multitude 
in uniform. The great majority, of course, had had German 
training. Now, however, they put the "pep" of a new 
game into the old forms of soldierly etiquette. Their two- 
finger salute was rendered with the precision of ambitious 
recruits and at the same time with the exactitude of "old- 
timers." They sprang unfailingly to attention at sight 
of a superior officer and stood like automatons until he 
turned away. Yet there seemed to be an un-German 
comradeship between the rank and file and the commis- 
sioned personnel, a democracy of endeavor, a feeling that 
they were all embarked together on the same big new 
adventure. There were, to be sure, some officers and a 
few men whose sidewalk manners suggested that they had 
learned Prussian ways a bit too thoroughly, but they were 
lost in a mass that had something of the easy-going tem- 
perament of the East or the South. 

All classes of the Polish population were represented in 
the new army from the bulking countryman who ran after 
me to say that the photograph I had just taken of him 
would not be a success because he had not been looking 
at the lens during the operation to the major who granted 

222 



AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 

me special permission to use my kodak in spite of military 
rules. This officer had been late in reaching his office, and 
I passed the time in his anteroom in conversation with his 
sergeant-major. When he entered at last the entire office 
force sprang to its feet with what in an older army would 
have been an exaggeration of discipline. The sergeant- 
major, his middle finger glued to the seams of his trousers, 
explained my presence and request. The major asked 
several questions in Polish, which the sergeant repeated to 
me in German, relaying my replies back to the major in 
his native tongue. When the latter had nodded his approval 
and disappeared, and the office force had relaxed into mere 
human beings, I expressed my surprise that an officer of 
such high rank knew no German. 

"Knows no German!" cried the sergeant-major, bursting 
into laughter. "The major was for nine years a captain in 
the German army. He is a graduate of the War College 
in Berlin and was a member of Hindenbiu-g's staff. But 
he never lets a word of the accursed tongue pass his lips if 
he can possibly avoid it.' 

The new Polish government had established a conscrip- 
tion act as drastic as if it had been taken bodily from the 
old German statute-books. All males between the ages 
of seventeen and forty-five were hable to service. Those 
between eighteen and thirty had already been called to 
the colors, though thus far German residents had been 
tacitly exempted. Every afternoon of my stay in Poznan 
a hundred or two of recruits, flower-bedecked and carrying 
each his carton of travel rations, marched in column of 
squads from the railway station to what had once been the 
Kaiser's barracks, singing as they went some rousing Polish 
song of the olden days. At least half of them wore more or 
less complete German uniforms. Some were so under- 
sized that a rifle in their hands would have resembled a 
machine-gun. But with few exceptions their military bear- 

223 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

ing testified to previous training under the exacting drill- 
sergeants of their former rulers. Watching this new addi- 
tion each day to the hordes in uniform that already crowded 
the city, one could not but wonder whether the new Poland 
was not giving refuge, perhaps unconsciously, to the dis- 
credited spirit of militarism that had so recently been 
expelled from its German Fatherland. 

The "revolution," or "Putsch,'' as the Poles call it, that 
brought about all this new state of affairs had been brief 
and to the point. Paderewski, relying, perhaps, on Ger- 
many's promise to help re-establish the ancient Polish 
Kingdom, had come to Posen for the Christmas holidays. 
The hotel he occupied had been decorated with the flags 
of the Allies. It is scarcely surprising that the Germans 
proceeded to tear them down in spite of the armistice that 
had recently been concluded. According to several ob- 
servers, they might even have "got away with" this had 
they not persisted in their Prussian aggressiveness. On 
December 27 th a Polish youth paused to ask another for a 
light from his cigarette. Matches had long been precious 
things in Posen. A German officer pounced upon the pair 
and demanded to know what conspiracy they were hatching 
together. The Polish youths quite properly knocked him 
down. Their companions joined in the fracas. The Polish 
tumvereins had long had everything prepared for just 
such an eventuality. Word swept like prairie fire through 
the city. French and Italian prisoners of war sprang to 
such arms as they could lay hands on and added their 
assistance. The soldiers of the garrison, being chiefly 
Poles or of Polish sympathies, walked out almost in a body 
and joined the revolt. It raged for twenty-four hours. 
In the words of the sergeant-major already introduced: 
"It was a busy day from four in the morning until the fol- 
lowing dawn. At least sixty ribs were broken — mostly 
German ones." There have been bloodier revolutions, 

224 



AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 

however, for the number killed is set at ten. The Polish 
leaders were soon masters of the situation. In three days 
they had established order. Their search for arms was 
thorough and included Polish as well as German houses. 
The government they had already established in secret soon 
tautened the reins that had been struck from the hands of 
the Germans, and by New Year's Day Poznan had already 
settled down to peace and to a contentment it had not 
known in more than a century. 

As far, at least, as outward appearances go, there was 
nothing particularly oppressive about the new rule. Civil- 
ians were not permitted on the streets after midnight, but 
those with any legitimate excuse for night-hawking were 
granted special passes. The Poles showed a tendency to 
meet half-way their next-door neighbor and late oppressor. 
With the exception of a few ''Polen-fresser,'' German resi- 
dents were not driven out, as in Metz and Strassburg. 
Boche merchants continued to do business at the old stand. 
Newspapers published in Germany were refused admittance, 
but that was a fair retaliation for similar action by the new 
authorities of the late Empire. Even the detested statues 
were not overthrown until March, when the Germans de- 
clined to give the Poles port facilities at Danzig. The lan- 
guage of the schools, as well as of government offices, was 
changed to Polish; but as soon as Berlin consented to a 
reciprocal arrangement, German was restored to the cur- 
riculum, though it was taught only a few hours a week, as a 
foreign tongue. In short, the conditions of Bromberg had 
been nicely reversed in Poznan. It must, to be sure, have 
been rather a tough life for the town braggart who had 
always espoused the German cause; but there was appar- 
ently nothing to be feared by those who know how to hold 
their tongues and confine their attention to their own 
affairs — and the German is a past-master at lying low when 
it is to his interest to do so. His native tongue was almost 

225 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

never heard on the streets, such arrogance as existed was 
confined now to the Poles, and the just-let-us-alone-and- 
we'U-be-good role had been assumed by the Teutons. 

There were suggestions, however, that the Poles were 
not yet adepts at governing, nor likely soon to establish a 
modem Utopia. Already they had succeeded in encumber- 
ing themselves with fully as much red-tape as the French. 
A musician as national leader and rallying-point seemed 
to be in keeping with the Polish temperament. There was a 
lack of practical directness in their methods, a tendency 
toward the erratic, at the expense of orderly progress. 
One of their foremost business men turned high official, 
to whom I applied for a signature and the imprint of a 
government stamp, received me with a protest that he was 
"too busy to breathe" — and spent two hours reciting 
Polish poetry to me and demonstrating how he had succeeded 
in photographing every secret document that had reached 
Posen during the war without being once suspected by the 
Germans. "I am not experienced in this business of 
government," he apologized, v/hen I succeeded at last in 
taking my leave, "but I am ready to sacrifice myself and 
all I have to the new Poland." 

The statement rang true in his case, but there were others 
whose repetition of it would have raised grave suspicions 
that they were putting the cart before the horse. The 
rush for government jobs under the new regime had in it 
something of the attitude of the faithful henchmen toward 
the periodical return to power of their beloved Tammany. 
There were tender reminiscences of the A. E. F. in the 
flocks of incompetent pretty girls who encumbered govern- 
ment offices, dipping their charming noses into everything 
except that which concerned them, as there was in the 
tendency on the part of both sexes to consider government 
transportation synonymous with opportunity for "joy- 
riding." It will be strange if the Polish servant-girls and 

226 




cheese! who said GERMAN POLAND WAS HUNGRY? 




A PEASANT S HOUSE IN THE PROVINCE OF POSEN 



AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 

factory hands who come to us in the future bring with them 
the accept-any thing spirit of the past, at least after the period 
of orientation to their new environment is over. They are 
*'feeHng their oats" at home now and will be apt to set 
their worth and their rights to full equality correspondingly 
higher. 

The Poles, evidently, are not by nature a frolicsome 
people, but they seemed to have thrown away the "lid" 
in Poznan and given free play to all the joy within them. 
Pianos were more in evidence than they had been during 
all the twenty months I had spent in war-torn Europe. 
Children appeared to have taken on a new gaiety. Night 
life was almost Parisian, except in the more reprehensible 
features of the "City of Light." It may have been due 
only to a temporary difference of mood in the two races, 
but Polish Poznan struck me as a far more livable place 
than German Berlin. Evidently the people of the prov- 
inces were not letting this new attractiveness of the restored 
city escape them; the newspapers bristled with offers of 
reward for any one giving information of apartments or 
houses for rent. Underneath their merriness, however, 
the religious current of the race still ran strong and swift. 
The churches discharged multitudes daily at the end of 
morning mass; no male, be he coachman, policeman, 
soldier, or newsboy, ever passed the crucifix at the end of 
the principal bridge without reverently raising his hat. 
There are Protestant Poles, but they apparently do not live 
in Poznan. Now and again, too, there were episodes 
quite the opposite of gay to give the city pause in the midst 
of its revelry — the drunken sots in uniform, for instance, 
who canvassed the shops demanding alms and prophesying 
the firing-squad for those who declined to contribute. 
Were they not perhaps the outposts of Bolshevism? But 
all this was immersed in the general gaiety, tinged with a 
mild Orientalism that showed itself not only in the architect- 
16 227 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

ure, but in such leisurely customs as closing shops and offices 
from one to three, in defiance of nearly a century and a half 
of the sterner German influence. 

It is quite possible that the increased liveliness of the 
Poznanians was as much due to the fact that they had 
plenty to eat as to their release from Teutonic bondage. 
The two things had come together. Being perhaps the 
richest agricultural district of the late Empire, the province 
of Posen was quick to recover its alimentary footing, once 
its frontiers had been closed against the all-devouring 
German. With the exception of potatoes, of which the 
supply was well in excess of local needs, the exportation of 
foodstuffs toward the hungry West had absolutely ceased. 
The result was more than noticeable in Poznan; it was 
conspicuous, all but overpowering, particularly to those 
arriving from famished Germany. Street after street was 
lined with a constant tantalization to the new-comer from 
the West, arousing his resentment at the appetite that was 
so easily satisfied after its constant vociferations in days gone 
by — and still to come. Butcher shops displayed an abun- 
dance of everything from frankfurters to sides of beef. 
Cheese, butter, eggs by the bushel, candy, sugar, sweet- 
meats were heaped high behind glass fronts that would 
have been slight protection for them in Berlin. In what 
were now known as ^'restauracya" one might order a break- 
fast of eggs, bacon, milk, butter, and all the other things 
the mere mention of which would have turned a German 
Wirt livid with rage, without so much as exciting a ripple 
on the waiter's brow. At the rathskeller of Poznan's 
artistic old city hall a "steak and everything," such a steak 
as not even a war-profiteer could command anywhere in 
Germany, cost a mere seven marks, including the inevitable 
mug of beer and the "lo per cent, for service" that was 
exacted here also by the Kellners' union. With the low 
rate of exchange — for Poznan was still using German 

228 



AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 

money — the price was considerably less than it would have 
been in New York at the same date. Far from being short 
of fats, the Poles were overgenerous with their grease and 
gravies. Bacon could be had in any quantity at six marks 
a pound; eggs at thirty pfennigs each. Bread, brown but 
excellent, was unlimited. Food- tickets, unknown in hotels 
and restaurants, were theoretically required for a few of the 
principal articles in the shops, but there was little difficulty 
in purchasing without them, at least with the payment of a 
slight "premium." On market-days the immense square 
allotted to them was densely crowded from corner to comer 
by curiously garbed female hawkers and coimtrymen offering 
every conceivable product of their farms and gardens. 
Poznan still consumed a few things that do not appear on 
the American bill of fare, such as doves, gull eggs, and 
various species of weeds and grasses; but the fact remains 
that the well-to-do could get anything their appetites 
craved, and the poor were immensely better off than in any 
city of Germany. There was only one shortage that irked 
the popular soul. Expression of it rang incessantly in my 
ears — "Please tell America to send us tobacco!" The 
queues before tobacconists' shops were as long and as per- 
sistent as in Germany. Ragged men of the street eagerly 
parted with a precious fifty-pfennig "shin-plaster" for a 
miserable "cigarette" filled for only half its length with an 
unsuccessful imitation of tobacco. The principal cafe, 
having husbanded its supply of the genuine article, placed 
a thousand of them on sale each evening at eight, "as a 
special favor to our clients." By that hour entrance was 
quite impossible, and though only two were allowed each 
purchaser, there was nothing but the empty box left five 
minutes later. 

Unselfishness is not one of mankind's chief virtues, partic- 
ularly in that chaos of conflicting interests known to the 
world as central Europe. In view of all they had won in 

229 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

so short a time, and amid the German shrieks of protest, 
it was disconcerting to find that the Poles were far from 
satisfied with what had been granted them by the Peace 
Conference. From high government officials to the man in 
the street they deluged me with their complaints, often 
naively implying that I had personally had some hand in 
framing the terms of the proposed treaty, or at least the 
power to have them altered before it was too late. They 
were dissatisfied with the western frontier that had been 
set for them, especially in West Prussia; they were particu- 
larly disgruntled because they had not been given Danzig 
outright. A nation of thirty million people should have a 
harbor of its own. Danzig was essentially Polish in its 
sympathies, in spite of the deliberate Germanization that 
had been practised upon it. Strangely enough they accused 
America of having blocked their aspirations in that particu- 
lar. They blamed Wilson personally for having shut them 
out of Danzig, as well as for the annoying delay in drawing 
up the treaty. The Germans had "got at him" through 
the Jews. The latter had far too much power in the Amer- 
ican government, as well as in American finances. The 
impression was wide-spread in Poznan that Mrs. Wilson is 
Jewish. The Germans and the Jews had always stuck 
together. Poland had always been far too lenient with the 
Jews. She had let them in too easily; had granted them 
citizenship too readily. As they spoke either Yiddish, 
an offshoot of German, or Russian, they had always lined 
up with the enemies of Poland. Half the German spies, 
every one of the Russian spies with whom Polish territory 
had been flooded during the war, had been Jews. The Poles 
in America had gathered money for the alleviation of suf- 
fering in their home-land, and had given it to Jews, Ger- 
mans, and Poles, irrespective of race. The Jews in America 
had collected similar funds and had expended them only 
among the Jews, From whatever point of view one ap- 

230 



AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 

proached him, the resident of Poznan had nothing good to 
say of the Chosen People. 

The story of Posen's existence under German rule, now 
happily ended, was largely a repetition of what had already 
been told me in Bromberg. In some ways this region had 
been even more harshly treated, if my informants were 
trustworthy. Polish skilled workmen "clear down to 
button-makers" had been driven out of the province. 
Great numbers had been more or less forcibly compelled 
to migrate into Germany. There were at least four hundred 
thousand Poles in the mines and factories of Westphalia. 
Saxony was half Polish; the district between Hamburg 
and Bremen was almost entirely Slavish in population. 
The Ansiedler — the German settlers whom the government 
had brought to Posen — had acquired all the best land. 
On the other hand, German Catholics were not allowed to 
establish themselves in the province of Posen, lest they 
join their coreligionists against the Protestant oppressors. 
Perhaps the thing that rankled most was the banishment 
of the Polish language from the schools. One could scarcely 
speak it with one's children at home, for fear of their using 
it before the teacher. Many of the youngsters had never 
more than half learned it. In twenty years more no one 
would have dared speak Polish in public. Men had b6en 
given three, and even four, months in prison for privately 
teaching their children Polish history. The schools were 
hopelessly Prussianized; the GeiTnan teachers received a 
special premium of one thousand marks or more a year 
over the regular salaries. All railway jobs went to Germans, 
except those of section men at two marks a day. There 
had been Polish newspapers and theaters, but they had 
never been allowed any freedom of thought or action. 

"The troublawith the German, or at least the Prussian," 
one new official put in, "is that it is his nature to get things 
by force. He was born that way. Why, the Prussians 

231 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

stole even their name; it was originally Barrusen, as the 
little corner of Russia was called where the robbers first 
banded together. They marauded their way westward 
and southward, treading first little people and then little 
nations under their iron heels. The very word the German 
uses for "get" or "obtain" tells his history. It is kriegen, 
to win by war — krieg. You seldom hear him use the 
gentler bekommen. Everything he possesses he has gekriegt. 
Then he is such a hypocrite! In 191 6, when we Poles first 
began to suffer seriously from hunger, some German officers 
came with baskets of fruit and sandwiches, gathered a 
group of Polish urchins, filled their hands with the food, 
and had themselves photographed with them, to show the 
world how generous and kind-hearted they were. But 
they did not tell the world that the moment the photographs 
had been taken the food was snatched away from the 
hungry children again, some of the officers boxing their 
ears, and sent back to the German barracks. How do you 
think the Poles who have been crippled for life fighting 
for the 'Fatherland' feel as they hobble about our streets? 
What would you say to serving five years in the German 
army only to be interned as a dangerous enemy alien at the 
end of it, as is the case with thousands of our sons who were^ 
notJ able to get across the frontier in time? No, the Ger- 
mans in Poznan are not oppressed as our people were under 
their rule. We are altogether too soft-hearted with them." 

The German residents themselves, as was to be expected, 
took a different view of the situation. When the Polish 
authorities had decorated my passport with permission to 
return to Berlin, I took no chances of being held up by the 
cantankerous dyspeptic at Kreuz and applied for a new 
vise by the German Volksrat of Posen. It occupied a 
modest little dwelling-house on the wide, curving avenue 
no longer recognizable under its former title of "Kaiser 

Wilhelm Ring." Barely had I established my identity 

232 



AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 

when the gloomy Germans took me to their bosom. Had 
I been fully informed of their side of the situation? Would 
I not do them the kindness to return at eleven, when they 
would see to it that men of high standing were there to 
give me the real facts of the case? My impressions of Posen 
would be wholly false if I left it after having consorted 
only with Poles. 

As a matter of fact I had already "consorted" with no 
small number of German residents, chiefly of the small- 
merchant class. Those I had found somewhat mixed in 
their minds. A few still prophesied a "peasants' war" 
in the territory allotted to Poland; a number of them 
shivered with apprehension of a "general Bolshevist up- 
rising." But fully as many pooh-poohed both those cheer- 
ful bogies. One thing only was certain — that without 
exception they were doing business as usual and would 
continue to do so as long as the Poles permitted it. The 
feeling for the "Fatherland" did not seem strong enough 
among the overwhelming majority of them to stand the 
strain of personal sacrifice. 

When I returned at eleven the Volksrat had been con- 
voked in unofficial special session. A half-dozen of the men 
who had formerly held high places in the Municipal Council 
rose ostentatiously to their feet as I was ushered into the 
chief sanctum, and did not sit down again until I had been 
comfortably seated. The chief spokesman had long been 
something corresponding to chairman of the Board of 
Aldermen. His close-cropped head glistened in the sun- 
shine that entered through the window at his elbow, and 
his little ferret-like eyes alternately sought to bore their 
way into my mental processes and to light up with a win- 
some naivete which he did not really possess. Most of 
the words I set down here are his, though some of them 
were now and then thrown in by his subservient but approv- 
ing companions. 

233 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

"With us Germans," he began, "it has become a case of 
* Vogel friss oder starb ' — eat crow or die. We are forced, 
for the time at least, to accept what the Poles see fit to 
allow us. The German residents of Posen are not exactly 
oppressed, but our lives are hemmed in by a thousand petty 
annoyances, some of them highly discouraging. Take, 
for instance, this matter of the street names. Granted that 
the Poles had the right to put them up in their own language. 
It was certainly a sign of fanaticism to tear down the Ger- 
man names. More than a fourth of the residents of Posen 
cannot read the new street placards. There is not a Polish 
map of the city in existence. When the province of Posen 
came back to us the Polish street names were allowed to 
remain until 1879 — for more than a hundred years. It 
is a sign of childishness, of retarded mentality, to daub 
with red paint all the German signs they cannot remove! 
It isn't much more than that to have forbidden the use 
of our tongue in governmental affairs. We Germans used 
both languages officially clear up to 1876. We even had 
the old Prussian laws translated into Polish. It is only 
during the last ten years that nothing but German was 
permitted in the public schools; and there have always 
been plenty of Polish private schools. I am still technically 
a member of the Municipal Council, but I cannot understand 
a word of the proceedings, because they are in Polish. 
Our lawyers cannot practise unless they use that language, 
although the judges, who pretend not to know German, 
speak it as readily as you or I. Yet these same lawyers 
cannot get back into Germany. At least give us time to 
learn Polish before abolishing German! Many a man bom 
here cannot speak it. There are German children of eighteen 
or twenty, who have never been outside the province, who 
are now learning Polish — that is, to write and speak it 
correctly. 

' ' Oh yes, to be sure, we can most of us get permission in 

534 



AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 

three or four weeks to leave the province, but only by 
abandoning most of our possessions and taking an oath 
never to return. No wonder so many Germans become 
Poles overnight. You can hardly expect otherwise, when 
they have lived here all their lives and have all their prop- 
erty and friends and interests here. No, military service 
is not required of Germans, even if they were bom here; 
but many of our youths have voluntarily become Polish 
soldiers, for the same reason that their parents have sud- 
denly turned Poles. Naturally, there is fighting along the 
boimdary of the province. The Poles want to fight, so 
they can have an excuse to keep their men under arms, 
and what can Germany do but protect herself? Poland is 
planning to become an aggressive, militaristic nation, as 
was falsely charged against the Fatherland by her enemies. 

"The complaints of the Poles at our rule were ridiculous. 
We paid German teachers a premium because they had 
harder work in teaching German to Polish children and in 
seeing that they did not speak the language that was un- 
wisely used at home. Railroad jobs, except common labor, 
were given to Germans because they were more efficient 
and trustworthy. Besides, does not Germany own the 
railroads? They complain that the best land was taken by 
German settlers; but the Poles were only too glad to sell 
to our Ansiedler — at high prices. Now they are attacking 
us with a fanaticism of the Middle Ages. Eighteen hundred 
German teachers, men who have been educating the Poles 
for twenty or twenty-five years, have suddenly been dis- 
charged and ordered to vacate government property within 
four weeks — yet they are not allowed to go back to Germany. 
The Pole is still part barbarian; he is more heartless than 
his cousin the Russian. 

"Seventy per cent, of the taxes in the province of Posen 
are paid by Germans. Yet no German who was not bom 
here can vote, though Poles who were not can. I know a 

23s 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

village where there are seventy Germans and five Poles — 
and the five Poles run things to suit themselves. Hus- 
bands, wives, and sons often have different rights of suffrage. 
The family of Baron X has lived here for a hundred and 
fifty years. The baron himself happens to have been bom 
in Berlin, because his mother went there to see a doctor. 
So he cannot vote, though his Polish coachman, who has 
not been here ten years, has all the rights of citizenship. 
The result is that government affairs are getting into a 
hopeless muddle. An ignorant fellow by the name of 
Korfanti — a Polish 'German-eater' — has now the chief 
voice in the Municipal Council. The Poles boycott German 
merchants. They deluge the city with placards and appeals 
not to buy of Germans. For a long time they refused to 
trade even a miserable little Polish theater for our splendid 
big Stadttheater. When the director of that finally got 
permission to take over the wholly inadequate little play- 
house for next season he had to advertise in order to find 
out how many Germans intend to stay in Posen — as you 
have seen in our German paper. What can the Poles do 
with our magnificent Stadttheater? They have no classics 
to give in it, nor people of sufficient culture to make up an 
audience. We are still allowed to give German opera, 
because they know they cannot run that themselves, and 
a few of the more educated Poles like it. But our splendid 
spoken classics seem to be doomed. 

"Then there is their ridiculous hatred of the Jews. The 
race may have its faults, but the five or six thousand Jews 
of Posen province play a most important business and 
financial role. They have always understood the advan- 
tages of German Kultur far better than the Poles. There is 
a Jewish Volksrat here that tries to keep independent of 
both the other elements of the population; but the great 
majority of the Jews stand with the Germans. They have 
no use for this new Zionism — except for the other fellow — ■ 

236 



AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 

unless you take seriously the aspirations of a few impractical 
young idealists" — a statement, by the way, which I heard 
from Jews of all classes in various parts of GermsLny. 

"We Germans lifted the Poles out of their semi-savagery. 
We brought them Kultur. Do not be deceived by what 
you see in Posen. It is a magnificent city, is it not?— 
finer, perhaps, than you Americans found Coblenz? Yet 
everything that gives it magnificence was built by the 
Germans — the well-paved streets, the big, wide boulevards, 
the splendid parks, all the government buildings and the 
best of the private ones, the street-cars, the electric lights, 
even the higher state of civilization you find among the 
masses. There is not a Pole in the province of Posen who 
cannot read and write. Do not make the mistake of 
thinking all these things are Polish because the Poles have 
stolen them. Before you leave, go and compare Posen 
with the Polish cities outside Germany. That will tell the 
story. In non-German Poland you will be struck by the 
appalling lack of schools, roads, doctors, hospitals, educa- 
tion, culture, by the sad condition of the workmen and 
the peasants — all those things that are included in the Ger- 
man word Kultur. In Galizia, where Austria virtually 
allowed the Poles to run themselves, the houses are only 
six feet high, and you could walk all day without finding 
a man who can read and write, or who can even speak 
German. Their cities are sunk in a degradation of the 
Middle Ages. Posen will fall into the same state, if the 
present Municipal Council continues in power. There are 
already frontier troubles between German and Russian 
Poland, and quarrels between the different sections that 
confirm what we Germans have always known — that the 
Poles cannot govern themselves. Warsaw does not wish to 
keep up our splendid system of workmen and old-age 
insurance because there is none in Russian Poland. Galizia 
complains that farm land is several times higher in price 

237 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

in the province of Posen, without admitting that it is 
German railroads and German settlers that have made 
it so. That advantage will soon disappear. The Poles 
will make a mess of the whole province and wiU have it 
sunk into the degradation in which we found it by the 
time a real ruling nation takes charge of it again." 

Just how much truth there was mixed in with the con- 
siderable amount of patent nonsense in the ex-chairman's 
declamation only a long stay in Poznan, or time itself, 
would show. The fact that the Poles allowed many of 
these statements, particularly the protests against the sud- 
den change of language, to be published in the local Ger- 
man newspaper speaks at least for their spirit of tolerance. 
Though the new government was visibly making mistakes, 
and had not yet settled down to the orderliness that should 
come from experience, no one but a prejudiced critic could 
have discovered immediate evidence that it was making 
any such complete "mess" of matters as the German 
Volksrat testified. Even if it had been, at least the mass 
of the population showed itself happy and contented with 
the change, and contentment, after all, may in time result 
in more genuine and lasting progress than that which comes 
from the forcible feeding of German Kultur. 

I dropped in at the Teatro Apollo one evening, chiefly 
to find out how it feels to see a play without understanding 
a word of it. An immense barnlike building, that looked 
as if it had once been a skating-rink or a dancing-pavilion, 
was crowded to suffocation with Poles of every class and 
variety, from servant-girls in their curious leg-of-mutton 
sleeves to colonels in the latest cut of Polish uniform. The 
actors — if they could have been dignified with that title — 
had recently been imported from Warsaw, and the alleged 
play they perpetrated could scarcely have been equaled 
by our silliest rough-and-tumble "comedians." The herd- 
like roar with which their inane sallies were unfailingly 

238 




SOLDIERS EXAMINING THE AUSWEIS OF THOSE ENTERING A HOTEL USED AS 
HEADQUARTERS OF THE TROOPS THAT RECONQUERED MUNICH 




ONE OF THE MANY DETACHMENTS THAT FREED MUNICH FROM THE SPARTICISTS 



AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 

greeted testified that the audience found them entertaining. 
But it may be that Poznan was in a particularly simple- 
minded mood during its first months of relief from a century 
of bitter oppression. I hope so, for I should regret to find 
that the startling contrast between this Polish audience 
and the German one at the artistic Stadttheater the following 
evening fairly represented the difference between the two 
races. I believe I am not prejudiced by the fact that the 
Volksrat presented me with a free ticket when I say that the 
latter performance was one of which any manager might 
have been justly proud. The audience, too, resembled the 
other about as a gathering of college professors resembles a 
collection of factory hands. There was a well-bred solemnity 
about it that could not, in this case, have been due merely 
to hunger, for there was no munching whatever between 
the acts, none even under cover of the darkened house, 
except here and there of candy, a luxury so long since for- 
gotten in Berlin that the happy possessor would never 
have dreamed of giving his attention at the same time to 
the merely esthetic appeal of the theater. There may have 
been Poles in the house, but at least the new army was 
conspicuous by its absence. Not a uniform was to be 
seen, with the exception of three scattered throtigh the 
"peanut gallery." Two crown boxes, destined only for 
Hohenzollem royalty or its representatives, sat empty, 
with something of the solemn demeanor of the vacant chair 
at the head of the table the day after the funeral. Who 
would occupy them when the Poles had taken over the 
playhouse? What, moreover, would they do toward main- 
taining the high standards of the stage before us? For the 
most indefatigable enemy of the Germans must have 
admitted that here was something that could ill be spared. 
If only they had been contented with bringing the masses 
these genuine benefits, without militarism, with more open 
competition, without so much appeal to the doctrine of 

239 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

force — ^but it has ever been Germany's contention that only 
by force can the mass of mankind be lifted to higher levels; 
that only an army can protect the self-appointed mis- 
sionaries of a loftier civilization. 

Armed with what those who read Polish assured me was 
permission to do so, I set out on foot one morning to the 
eastward. Beyond the last group of guards wearing the 
silver double-eagle on their threadbare German uniforms, 
I fell in with three barefooted Polish peasant women. They 
were barely thirty, yet all three were already well-nigh 
toothless, and their hardy forms and faces were plainly 
marked with the signs that testify to grueling labor and the 
constant bearing of children. The German they spoke was 
far superior to the dialects of many regions of purely Teu- 
tonic population. Their demeanor was cheerful, yet behind 
it one caught frequent glimpses of that background of 
patient, unquestioning acceptance of life as it is which 
distinguishes the country people of Europe. 

The most energetic of the trio showed a willingness to 
enter into conversation; the others confined themselves to 
an occasional nod of approval, as if the exertion of keeping 
pace with us left them no strength to expend in mere words. 
It was plain from the beginning that they were not enthusi- 
astic on the subject then uppermost in the city behind us. 
They greeted my first reference to it with expressions 
that might have been called indifferent, had they not been 
tinged with evidence of a mild resentment. 

"What does it matter to us people of the fields," retorted 
the less taciturn of the group, "whether Poles or Germans 
sit in the comfort of government offices, so long as they 
let us alone? Things were all right as they were, before 
the war came. Why trouble us with all these changes? 
Now they are breaking our backs with new burdens, as 
if we had not had enough of them for five years. First they 
take our men and leave us to do their work. I have not a 

240 



AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 

male relative left, except my husband, and he is so sickly- 
that he is no longer a man. He is paid twelve marks for 
eight hours' work; fifteen for ten. But what help is that 
when he cannot work ten hours, or even eight ? They offered 
him the iron cross. He told them he would rather have 
something to feed his family with at home. They asked 
him if he was not already getting forty marks a month for the 
support of his family. How could I feed four children, 
even after the other two had died, with forty marks a 
month ? For three winters I had nothing but dried potatoes 
and salt. I coiild not have bread for myself because the 
flour for the children took all the tickets. Now the war is 
over, yet they are still taking away what we have left. 
The same soldiers come and drive off our horses — for the 
silver eagle on their caps has not changed their natures. 
Pay for them? Ach, what is eight hundred marks for a 
horse that is worth six thousand? And how can we culti- 
vate our fields without them? Who started the war? 
Ach, they are all arguing. What does it matter, so long 
as they stop it? Will the Germans sign? They should, 
and have done with it. If they don't, all the men over 
fifty, including the Germans and even the Jews" — there 
was a sneer in this last word, even in the country — "will 
be at it again. We have had enough of it. Yet if the 
soldiers come and tell my husband to go he must go, sick 
though he is." 

The basket each of the trio carried contained the midday 
lunch of her husband in the fields. I turned aside to the 
grassy slope on which two of the couples assembled. The 
men insisted that I share their meal with them. It was 
more nourishing than a ten-mark repast in a Berlin restau- 
rant, but the absence of bread was significant. When I 
gave the men each a pinch of tobacco crumbs they an- 
nounced themselves delighted at the exchange, and mumbled 
halting words about the well-known generosity of Ameri-. 

241 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

cans. As I turned my kodak upon them they greeted it 
with a laughing "Oh, la la!" There was no 'need to ask 
where they had, picked up that expression. It oriented 
their war experiences as definitely as it will distinguish 
for years to come the Americans, in whatever garb one 
finds them, who were members of the A. E. F. in France. 

The men were less indifferent to the recent change of 
government than their wives, but even they could not have 
been called enthusiastic. What struck one most was the 
wider outlook on life the Germans had been forced to give 
them in spite of themselves. Had they been left to till 
their farms, these plodding peasants would probably still 
have swallowed whole the specious propaganda of their 
erstwhile rulers. Now, after four years of military service 
that had carried them through all central Europe, they had 
developed the habit of forming their own opinions on all 
questions; they took any unverified statement, from what- 
ever source, with more than a grain of salt. It would be a 
mistake nowadays to think of the European peasant as the 
prejudiced conservative, the plaything of deliberate mis- 
information, which he was five years ago. In the light of 
his new experiences he is in many cases doing more individ- 
ual thinking than the average city resident. 

Yet, I must admit, the conclusions of this well- traveled 
pair did not boil down into anything very different from the 
consensus of opinion, even though they reached them by 
their own peculiar trains of thought. Germany, they were 
convinced, had the full guilt of the war; not the Kaiser 
particularly — they call him "Wilhelm" in Posen province 
now, and even there one detects now and again a tendency 
toward the old idolatry he seems personally to have enjoyed 
throughout the whole Empire — but the military crowd, 
"and the capitalists." They disclaimed any hatred of the 
Germans, "until they wanted to rule the earth" and sought 
to make the peasants the instruments of their ambition. 

242 




MILITARY DISCIPLINE WAS STILL STRICT AMONG THE TROOPS HOLDING MUNICH 




TROOPS ENTERING MUNICH AFTER THE FLEEING SPARTICISTS 



AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 

They, too, charged Wilson personally with delaying the 
conclusion of peace — on the fate of Danzig they seemed to 
be supremely indifferent. 

"It's all politics, anyway," concluded one of them. 
"They are all playing politics. If the Germans don't sign 
they will be divided up as Poland was a hundred and forty 
years ago. But this new government in Posen is no better 
than the old. What we need is something entirely new 
— a government of the peasants and of the working-classes." 

The women had from the beginning tried to lead their 
husbands away from "arguing politics," chiefly with ludi- 
crously heavy attempts at coquetry, and at length they 
succeeded. I regained the highway. On either hand lay 
slightly rolling fields of fertile black soil, well cultivated 
as far as the eye could see, with only a scattering of trees. 
Miles away an abandoned Zeppelin hangar bulked into the 
sky. There were more women laborers than men; several 
gangs of them were working with picks and shovels ; another 
group was slowly but patiently loading bricks. Horses 
were to be seen here and there, but oxen were in the ma- 
jority. Farm-houses showed a rough comfort and a toler- 
able cleanliness, villages a passable neatness that may or 
may not have been due to German influence. Certainly 
the architecture, the farming methods, the communal 
customs, were little different from those of Prussia or the 
Rhineland. 

The dinner served me in the chief tavern of a village of 
some two thousand inhabitants was nothing to complain of, 
either in variety or price. A general-shop keeper stated 
that "with the exception of a few semi-luxuries, such as 
cocoa and toilet soap," his grocery department could still 
meet the decreased demands made upon it. In the clothing 
lines everything was scarce or wholly lacking. Worst of 
all, there was nothing fit to drink or smoke. The strong 
spirits that had once been his chief trade had become so 

17 243 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

weak no one but boys would drink them. If only America 
would send concentrated alcohol they could doctor the stock 
of liquor they had on hand so that no one would know the 
difference. Then if they could only get some American 
tobacco! Life was not what it used to be, without a real 
cigarette from one month's end to the other. The German 
rule, on the whole, had not been so bad as many of the 
Allies seemed to believe. They got along, though it was 
rather pleasant to be relieved of the arrogant fellows, or 
see them crawl into their shells. No German resident in 
the village had given any sign of intending to move away. 
The communal school was still teaching the German lan- 
guage — two or three hours a week now. No one had 
noticed any other change of any importance. The French 
prisoners confined in the province during the war had been 
brutally treated. There was no doubt about that; he had 
seen it himself. But on the whole the German authorities 
had not been much harder on the Polish population than 
upon their own people, in Prussia and elsewhere. It was 
all part of the war, and every one in the Empire had to bear 
his share of the burdens. Happily, it was over now, if only 
the new Polish government did not grow ambitious for 
military conquests also, with the millions of soldiers, some 
of them patriotic to the point of self-sacrifice, under its 
command. 

My hope of walking out of Posen province suffered the 
same fate as my plan of tramping into it from Germany. 
In the end I was forced to return to Poznan and make my 
exit by train over the same route by which I had entered. 
In the third-class compartment I occupied there were five 
German residents who had renounced forever their right 
to return, for the privilege of leaving now with the more 
portable of their possessions. Two of them had been bom 
in the amputated province; the others had lived there most 
of their lives. All spoke Polish as readily as German. 

244 



AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 

One masterly, yet scholarly youth, who had served through 
the war as a lieutenant, was a school-teacher by profession, 
as was the uncle who accompanied him. They had taught 
six and twenty-six years, respectively, but had been dis- 
possessed of their positions and of their government dwell- 
ings by the new rulers. Up to the time we reached the 
frontier all five of my companions laid careful emphasis 
on the statement that they were going to seek re-estab- 
lishment in their civilian professions in what was left of the 
Fatherland. 

At Wronki the Polish authorities were far more inquisi- 
tive than they had been toward travelers from the other 
direction. One by one each compartment group was 
herded together, bag and baggage, and strained through 
the sieve of a careful search-and-questioning bureau. The 
soldier who examined my knapsack glared at the half-dozen 
precious American cigars I had left as if nothing but the 
presence of his superiors could have prevented him from 
confiscating them. Only sufficient food for the day's 
journey was allowed to pass. In some cases this rule was 
interpreted rather liberally, but no one got through with 
more than ten or twelve pounds to the person. The amount 
that was confiscated easily sufficed to feed the garrison of 
Wronki for the twenty-four hours before the next west- 
boimd train was due. An old woman, riding fourth class, 
who resembled one of India's famine victims, was despoiled 
of almost the entire contents of her trunk-sized chest — 
several sacks of flour, a dozen huge loaves of bread, and a 
generous supply of sausage. The fact that she spoke only 
Polish did not seem to impress the searchers in her favor, 
who silenced her wails at last by bundling her bodily back 
into the coach and tossing her empty coffer after her. 

When at last we were under way again the Germans in 
my compartment took to comparing notes. One, a doctor, 
was bewailing the "plain theft" of a surgical appliance of 

245 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

rubber which the Poles had confiscated in spite of what 
seemed to be complete proof that it was his private property 
and not part of the German army supplies. A foxy-faced 
country youth, who had carefully changed from shoes to 
high boots just before the arrival at Wronki, changed back 
again now with the announcement that there were some 
four thousand marks concealed between the boot soles. 
The younger schoolmaster threw off the disguise with 
which he had covered his real thoughts and announced, 
vociferously : 

"You drive me out to work for my livelihood! I will 
work for my Fatherland at the same time. I will go to 
Bromberg this very evening and join the army again. 
We shall see whether the Poles can keep Posen." 

The two other young men asserted that they, too, had 
left with exactly that intention. An indignation meeting 
against the Poles raged for an hour or more. 

"I could have remained and kept my position," went on 
the schoolmaster, "if I had wanted to turn Polack. Both 
my parents were Polish; I spoke it before I did German; 
but I shall always remain a true son of the Fatherland, 
no matter what happens to it." 

A few hundred yards from Kreuz station our train halted 
for more than an hour and gave us the pleasure of watching 
the Berlin express go on without us. Though it would have 
been a matter of twenty seconds to have sprinted across the 
delta between the two lines, armed boy soldiers prevented 
any one from leaving his compartment. To all appearances 
it was a case of "pure meanness" on the part of the German 
authorities. Our wrath at being forced to wait a half-day 
for a dawdling local train was soon appeased, however, 
by the announcement that we were the last travelers who 
would be allowed to enter Germany from the province of 
Posen "until the war was over." The frontier had been 
closed by orders from Berlin. It is a long way round from 

246 




« w 



AN AMPUTATED MEMBER 

Poland to Holland, and amid the turmoil of gloomy men, 
disheveled women, and squalling children who had been 
turned back with their goal so near I found cause to be 
personally thankful, particularly as I succeeded in eluding 
during all the afternoon the glassy eye of the cantankerous 
dyspeptic, who buffeted his way now and then through 
the throng. 

Some things are still cheap in Germany. A twelve-word 
telegram from Kreuz to Berlin cost me nine cents — and it 
was delivered in telegraphic haste. The hungry passengers 
from farther east with whom I shared a compartment that 
evening eyed me greedily as I supped on the supplies I 
had brought from Posen. One man wearing several dia- 
monds leaned toward me as I was cutting my coffee-brown 
loaf and sighed, reminiscently, "What beautiful white 
bread!" When I offered to share it with him, however, 
he refused vigorously, as if his pride would not permit him 
to accept what his appetite was so loudly demanding. 
Unable to find a place in the section to which my third- 
class ticket entitled me, I was riding second-class. The 
train-guard on his rounds confiscated my ticket and ignored 
my offer to pay the difference, with a stern, "It is unlawful 
to ride in a higher class." On the Friedrichstrasse platform, 
however, instead of conducting me to his superiors, he 
sidled up to me in the darkness and murmured, "If you 
have a five-mark note with you it will be all right." Ger- 
many is changing indeed if her very railway employees 
are taking on these Latin characteristics. 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

slip granting permission to walk the streets until two in the 
morning. A bedraggled hotel directly across the way- 
spared me that necessity. The information its registry-pad 
required of guests was more exacting than its interior 
aspect, but neither here nor at the station exit was there 
any demand for proof of identity. 

Toward midnight, as I was falling asleep, a score of 
erratically spaced shots and the brief rat-a-tat of a machine- 
gun sounded somewhere not far away. Their direction 
was too uncertain, however, to make it worth while to 
accept the permission granted by the red slip. In the 
morning the city was thronged with the business-bent 
quite as if disorders had never dodged in and out of its wide 
streets. The main hotels, however, had been partly taken 
over by the staffs of the newly arrived troops, and pulsated 
with field gray. At the doors very young men in iron 
hats leaned their fixed bayonets in the crook of an elbow 
while they examined the Ausweis with which each civilian 
was supposed to prove his identity. I entered several of 
them in the vain hope that the flash of my American pass- 
port would "start something." The youths in uniform 
handed it back each time without so much as a flicker of 
curiosity on their rather dull faces. Inside, another boy 
volunteer ran his hands hastily over me in quest of concealed 
weapons; but not even the most obviously harmless Ba- 
varian escaped that attention. 

The staff evidently had no secrets from the world at 
large. At any rate, I wandered into a dozen hotel rooms 
that had been turned into offices and idled about undis- 
turbed while majors gave captains their orders for the day 
and lieutenants explained to sergeants the latest commands 
from higher up. What had become of that stem discipHne 
and the far-famed secrecy of the German army? The 
soldiers of democratic America were automatons in the 
presence of their officers compared with these free-and- 

250 



ON THE ROAD IN BAVARIA 

easy youths in gray; over in Posen the Poles were many- 
fold more exacting. Had I been a spy, there were several 
opportunities to have pocketed papers strewn about tables 
and improvised desks. When at last an officer looked up 
at me inquiringly I explained my presence by asking for 
written permission to take photographs within the be- 
leaguered city, and it was granted at once without question. 

Berlin had been sinister of aspect; Munich was bland, 
a softer, gentler, less verboten land. Its citizens were not 
merely courteous; they were aggressively good-natured, 
their cheerfidness bubbled over on aU who came in contact 
with them. It was almost as easy to distinguish a native 
from the stiff Prussians who had descended upon them as 
if the two groups had worn distinctive uniforms. Yet 
Munich had by no means escaped war-time privations. 
Long lines of hollow-eyed women flowed sluggishly in and 
out of under-stocked food-shops; still longer ones, chiefly 
though not entirely male, crept forward to the door of 
the rare tobacconists prepared to receive them, and emerged 
clutching two half-length cigarettes each, their faces beam- 
ing as if they had suddenly come into an unexpected inheri- 
tance. They were good-natured in spite of what must have 
been the saddest cut of all from the Bavarian point of view — 
the weakness and high cost of their beloved beer. In those 
vast imderground Bierhallen for which Munich had been 
far-famed for centuries, where customers of both sexes 
and any age that can toddle pick out a stone mug and 
serve themselves, the price per liter had risen to the breath- 
less height of thirty-four pfennigs. As if this calamity 
were not of itself enough to disrupt the serenity of the 
Bavarian temperament, the foaming beverage had sunk to 
a mere shadow of its former robust strength. 

In the "cellar" of the beautiful Rathaus a buxom barmaid 
reminded me that Tuesday and Friday were meatless days 
in Germany. The fish she served instead brought me the 

251 



. VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

added information that Munich is far from the sea. My 
fellow-sufferers constituted a truly democratic gathering. 
The still almost portly mayor chuckled with his cronies 
at a table barely visible through the smoke-screened forest 
of massive pillars. CoUarless laborers clinked their mugs, 
quite unawed by the presence of city councilors or "big 
merchants." A leather-skinned old peasant sat down 
opposite me and opened conversation at once, with no 
suggestion of that aloofness of the north. From the rucksack 
that had slipped from his shoulders he took a half -loaf of 
dull-brown peasant bread and a square of boiled smoked 
pork, ordering nothing but a half-bottle of wine. Beer, 
he explained, had fallen too low in its estate to be worthy 
of his patronage, at least city beer. In his village, three 
hours away, he could still endure it. Ach, how the famous 
beer of Munich had deteriorated! How far away those 
happy days seemed! And to think of paying three marks 
for a half -bottle of wine! Why, in the good old days . . . 
And this dinner of mine — a plate of fish bones, some stewed 
grass, city bread, and city beer — worthless stuff — potatoes, 
to be sure, but not enough to keep a man's legs under him 
for half the afternoon — and a bill of more than eight marks! 
I restrained my impulse to tell him of that prize dinner in 
Berlin. 

He had not always been a peasant. Twenty years before 
he had started a factory — roof tiles and bricks. But in 
191 5 he had gone back to the farm. At least a Bauer got 
something to eat. The peace terms? What else could 
Germany do but sign? If the shoe had been on the other 
foot the war lords in Berlin would have demanded as much 
or more. If they hadn't wanted war in the first place! 
Wilhelm and all his crowd should have quit two or three 
years ago while the quitting was good. What did it all 
matter, anyway, so long as order returned and the peasants 
could work without being pestered with all this military 

252 



ON THE ROAD IN BAVARIA 

service, and the taxes, not to mention the "hamsterers," the 
pests! American, was I? He had noticed I was not a 
Bavarian. (So had I, straining my ears to catch the mean- 
ing of his atrocious dialect.) He had taken me for a 
man from the north, a Hamburger perhaps. American? 
They say that is a rich country. He had read somewhere 
that even the peasants sometimes had automobiles! How 
about the beer? Deteriorating there, too, eh? Ach, this 
war ! Going to abolish beer ! What an insane idea ! What 
will people live on? They can't afford wine, and Schnapps 
is not good for a man in the long run, and too strong for the 
women and children. Well, he must be getting back to 
his beet-field. Glad to have met an American. He had 
often heard of them. Good day and a happy journey. 

Troops were still pouring into Munich. That afternoon 
what before the war would have looked to Americans like 
a large army marched in column of fours along the bank of 
the swift, pale-blue Isar and swimg in through the heart 
of town. There were infantry, machine-gun, and light- 
artillery sections, both horse- and motor-drawn, and from 
end to end they were decorated with flowers, which clung 
even to the horses' bridles and peered from the mouths 
of the cannon. All the aspect of a conquering army was 
there, an army that had retaken one of its own cities after 
decades of occupation by the enemy. Greetings showered 
upon the columns, a trifle stiff and irresponsive with pride, 
after the manner of popular heroes; but it was chiefly voice- 
less greetings, the waving of hands and handkerchiefs, in 
striking contrast to similar scenes among the French. 

The Boy Scouts of a year or two ago filled a large portion, 
possibly a majority, of the ranks. The older men scattered 
among them bore plainly imprinted on their faces the 
information that they had remained chiefly for lack of 
ambition or opportunity to re-enter civil life. Their 
bronzed features were like frames for those of the eager, 

253 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

life-tasting youths they surrounded, not so much in color 
as in their disillusioned, nothing-new-to-us expressions. 
All wore on their collars the gold or silver oak-leaves of 
volunteers for "home and border protection"; an insignia 
belonging to generals only before the flight of the Kaiser. 
Rumor had it, however, that there were many still held 
under the old conscription laws, particularly those of Polish 
blood. The same inarticulate voices whispered that, despite 
the opinion of Allied staffs, Germany still had a million 
men under arms; on the books they were carried as dis- 
charged; in reality they were sustained by the government 
as "out-of-works" and housed in barracks near enough to 
arsenals or munition dumps to equip themselves in a twink- 
ling. What percentage of truth the assertion possessed 
could only have been determined by long and deliberate 
study, for though Munich, like many another city and 
even the country districts, seemed to swarm with soldiers, 
many of them were so only in outward appearance. Dis- 
charged men were permitted to use their uniforms until 
they were worn out; the mere removal of the shoulder- 
straps made one a civilian — unlike the soldiers resident 
in the occupied region, where civilian garb of field gray 
was furnished with the discharged papers — and boys of all 
ages, in many cases large enough to have the appearance 
of real soldiers, were as apt to wear the uniform and the 
red-banded cap without visor as anything else. 

The Sparticist uprising in Munich, now crushed, evidently 
made less trouble on the spot, as usual, than in foreign 
newspapers. All classes of the population — except perhaps 
that to which the turn of events had brought the wisdom 
of silence — admitted that it had been a nuisance, but it had 
left none of them ashen with fear or gaunt with suffering. 
Indeed, business seemed to have gone on as usual during 
all but the two or three days of retaking the city. Banks 
and the larger merchants had been more or less heavily 

254 



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1 iHI 






^ 



BAVARIAN VOLUNTEERS 



11 - r 


IMiENHAOsKopp^^ 


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■BB^^SBl^HBiV 



A CORNER OF MUNICH THAT WAS NOT POPULAR DURING THE DRIVING OUT OF 

THE SPARTICISTS 



ON THE ROAD IN BAVARIA 

levied upon; lawyers and a few other classes whom the 
new doctrine ranked as "parasitic" had found it wise to 
leave their offices closed; but in the main all agreed that 
the population at large was never troubled in their homes 
and seldom on the street. The mistreatment of women, 
with rumors of which foreign newspapers reeked, was 
asserted to have been rare, and their "nationalization," 
which the cables seem to have announced, had not, so far, 
at least, been contemplated. All in all, the Bavarian capital 
suffered far less than Winnipeg imder a similar uprising of 
like date. 

The moving spirit had come from Russia, as already- 
mentioned , with a few local theorists or self-seekers of 
higher social standing as its chief auxiliaries. The rank 
and file of the movement were escaped Russian prisoners 
and Munich's own out-of-works, together with such dis- 
orderly elements as always hover about any upheaval 
promising loot or unearned gain. But the city's chief scare 
seemed to have been its recapture by government troops 
under orders from Berlin. Then for some fifty hours the 
center of town was no proper place for those to dally who 
had neglected their insurance premiums. A hundred more 
or less of fashionable shop-fronts bore witness to the ease 
with which a machine-gunner can make a plate-glass look 
like a transparent sieve without once cracking it; rival 
sharpshooters had all but rounded off the comers of a few 
of the principal buildings. The meek, plaster-faced Prot- 
estant church had been the worst sufferer, as so often 
happens to the innocent bystander. The most fire-eating 
Miinchener admitted that barter and business had lagged 
in the heart of town during that brief period. 

But Munich's red days had already faded to a memory. 
Even the assassination of hostages, among them some of 
the city's most pompous citizens, by the fleeing Sparticists 
was now mentioned in much the same impersonal tone 

255 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

with which the Swiss might refer to the death of WiUiam 
Tell or an Englishman regret the loss of Kitchener. The 
blue-and-white flag of Bavaria fluttered again from the 
staffs that had been briefly usurped by the red banner of 
revolt; the dark-blue uniform of the once half-autonomous 
kingdom again asserted its sway over local matters in the 
new Volksreich Bayern. At the Deutsches Theater a large 
audience placidly sipping its beer set on little shelves before 
each seat alternately roared and sniffled at the bare-kneed 
mountaineers in feathered hats and the buxom Models who 
bounced through a home-made but well-done "custom 
picture" in the local dialect. It was evident that life in 
Munich was not likely to afford any more excitement than 
had the apathetic north. The atmosphere of the place 
only helped to confirm the ever-hardening conviction that 
the German, north or south, east or west, had little real 
sympathy for revolutions compared with the privilege of 
pursuing his calling steadily and undisturbed. It was 
high time to take to the road while a faint hope still remained 
that something might lay in wait for me along the way to 
put a bit of ginger into a journey that had thus far lamen- 
tably failed to fulfil its promise. 

I breakfasted next morning with the German staff. 
At least I was the only civilian in the palm-decked dining- 
room where a score of high ranking wearers of the iron cross 
munched their black bread and purple Ersatz marmalade 
with punctilious formality. Away from their men, they 
seemed to cling as tenaciously to the rules of their caste 
as if disaster had never descended upon it. Each officer 
who entered the room paused to click his heels twice resound- 
ingly and bow low to his seated fellows, none of whom gave 
him the slightest attention. It was as truly German a 
gesture as the salute with which every wearer of the horizon 
blue enters a public eating-place is French. 

Nine o'clock had already sounded when I swung over my 

256 



ON THE ROAD IN BAVARIA 

back the rucksack containing my German possessions 
and struck out toward the north. Now, if ever, was the 
time for the iron hand of the enemy to fall upon me. Per- 
haps my mere attempt to leave the city on foot would 
bring me an adventure. Vain hope! Neither civilians nor 
the endless procession of soldiers gave me any more atten- 
tion than they did the peasants returning to their rich 
acres. Two sadly uneventful hours out of town a new prom- 
ise appeared in the offing. A soldier under a trench helmet, 
armed with a glistening fixed bayonet, was patrolling a 
crossroad. He stepped forward as he caught sight of me, 
grasped his piece in an alert attitude, stared a moment in 
my direction, and — turning his back, leaned against a tree 
and lighted a cigarette. Evidently I should have to fly 
the Stars and Stripes at my masthead if I hoped to attract 
attention. Not far beyond stood weather-blackened bar- 
racks sufficient to have housed a regiment. I paused to 
photograph a company that was falling in. I marched out 
in front of the jostling throng and took a "close-up" of the 
lieutenant who was dressing it. He smiled faintly and 
stepped to the end of the line to run his eye along it. I 
refrained from carrying out an impulse to slap him on the 
back and shout : ' ' Heh, old top ! I am an American, just out 
of the army! What are you going to do about it?" and 
plodded on down the broad highway. How could a city 
be called beleaguered and a country under martial law if 
strangers could wander in and out of them at will, photo- 
graphing as they went? 

Fifteen kilometers from the capital I stopped at a cross- 
roads Gasthaus, quite prepared to hear my suggestion of 
food answered with a sneer. Two or three youthful ex- 
soldiers still in uniform sat at one of the bare wooden tables, 
sipping the inevitable half-liter mugs of beer. I ordered 
one myself, not merely because I was thirsty, but because 
that is the invariable introduction to any request in a 

257 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

Bavarian inn. As the ponderous but neat matron set the 
foaming glass before me with the never-lacking "May it 
taste well!" I opened preliminaries on the food question, 
speaking gently, lest so presumptive a request from a total 
stranger awaken the wrath of the discharged soldiers. 
Mine hostess had no such misgivings. In a voice as loud 
and penetrating as my own had been inarticulate she bade 
me explain my desires in detail. I huskily whispered eggs, 
fried eggs, a plebeian dish, perhaps, in the land of my 
birth, but certainly a greater height of luxury in Germany 
than I had yet attained. I quail still at the audacity of that 
request, which I proffered with an elbow on the alert to 
protect my skull from the reply by physical force I more 
than half expected. Instead she made not a sound, after 
the manner of Bavarian innkeepesses when taking orders, 
and faded heavily but noiselessly away in the direction of 
the kitchen. 

A few minutes later I beheld two Spiegeleier descending 
upon me, not merely real eggs, but of that year's vintage. 
One of them alone might have been an astonishment; a 
whole pair of them trotting side by side as if the Kaiser 
had never dreamed how fetching the letters Rex Mundis 
would look after his name was all but too much for me. I 
caught myself clinging to the bench under me as one might 
to the seat of an airplane about to buck, or whatever it is 
ships of the air do when they feel skittish. A whole plate- 
ful of boiled potatoes bore the regal couple attendance, and 
a generous slab of almost edible bread, quite unlike a city 
helping both in size and quality, brought up the rear. 
When I reached for a fifty-mark note and asked for the 
reckoning the hostess went through a laborious process in 
mental arithmetic and announced that, including the 
two half -liters of beer, I was indebted to the extent of one 
mk. twenty-seven! In the slang of our school-days, "You 
could have knocked me over with a feather," particularly 

258 



ON THE ROAD IN BAVARIA 

as four hours earlier, back in a modest Munich hotel, I had 
been mulcted twelve marks for an Ersatz breakfast of 
"coffee, bread, marmalade," and four very thin slices of 
ham. 

Twenty kilometers out of the city the flat landscape 
became slightly rolling. Immense fields of mustard planted 
in narrow rows splashed it here and there with brilliant 
saffron patches. Now and then an Ersatz bicycle rattled 
by, its rider, like the constant thin procession of pedestrians, 
decorated with the inevitable rucksack, more or less full. 
The women always seemed the more heavily laden, but 
no one had the appearance of being burdened, so natural 
a part of the custom of rural Germany is the knapsack 
of Swiss origin. Each passer-by looked at me a bit sourly, 
as if his inner thoughts were not wholly agreeable, and 
gave no sign or sound of greeting, proof in itself that I was 
still in the vicinity of a large city. But their very expres- 
sions gave evidence that I was not being taken for a tramp, 
as would have been the case in many another land. Ger- 
many is perhaps the easiest country in the world in which 
to make a walking trip, for the habit of wandering the 
highways and footpaths, rucksack on back, is all but 
universal. Yet this very fact makes it also in a way the 
least satisfactory, so little attention does the wanderer 
attract, and there are consequently fewer openings for 
conversation. 

Many fine work-horses were still to be seen in spite of the 
drain of war, but oxen were in the majority. At least half 
the laborers in the fields still wore the red-banded army 
cap, often with the Bavarian cocarde still upon it. One could 
not but wonder just what were the inner reflections of the 
one-armed or one-legged men to be seen here and there 
struggling along behind their plows, back in their native 
hills again, maimed for life in a quarrel in which they really 
had neither part nor interest. Whatever they thought, 
18 2 59 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

they were outwardly as cheerful as their more fortunate 
fellows. 

I had intended to let my fellow-pedestrians break the 
ice first, out of curiosity to know how far from the city 
they would begin to do so. But the continued silence 
grew a bit oppressive, and in mid-afternoon I fell into step 
with a curiously mated couple who had quenched their 
thirst in the same Gasthaus as I a few minutes before. 
The woman was a more than buxom Frau of some forty 
summers, intelligent, educated, and of decided personality. 
She was bare-headed, her full-moon face sunburnt to a 
rich brown, her massive, muscular form visibly in perspira- 
tion, an empty rucksack on her back. Her husband, at 
least sixty, scrawny, sallow-faced under the cap of a forest- 
ranger, hobbled in her wake, leading two rather work- 
broken horses. He was what one might call a faint indi- 
vidual, one of those insignificant characters that fade quickly 
from the memory, a creature of scanty mentality, and a 
veritable cesspool of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition 
thrown into relief by the virility of his forceful spouse. 

The man had set out that morning from Munich to 
deliver the horses to a purchaser a hundred miles away 
in the Bavarian hills. Poor as they were, the animals had 
been sold for seven thousand marks. A first-class horse 
was worth six to ten thousand nowadays, he asserted. 
Times had indeed changed. A few years ago only an 
insane man would have paid as many hundred. It was 
a hot day for the middle of May, a quick change from the 
long, unusual cold spell. The crops would suffer. He 
didn't mind walking, if only beer were not so expensive 
when one got thirsty. Having exhausted his scant mental 
reservoir with these and a few as commonplace remarks, 
he fell into the rear conversationally as well as physically, 
and abandoned the field to his sharp-witted spouse. 

She, having more than her share of all too solid flesh to 

260 



ON THE ROAD IN BAVARIA 

carry, had left the afternoon before and passed the night 
at a wayside inn. It was not that she was fond of such 
excursions nor that she could not trust her husband away 
from home. While he was delivering the horses she would 
go "hamstering," buying up a rucksackful of food among the 
peasants of that region, if any could be coaxed out of them, 
and they wotild return by train. Fortunately, fourth-class 
was still cheap. Before the war she had never dreamed 
of going anything but second. I broke my usual rule of 
the road and mentioned my scribbling proclivities. A 
moment later we were deeply engrossed in a discussion of 
German novelists and dramatists. The placid, bourgeois- 
looking Frau had read everything of importance her literary 
fellow-countrymen had produced; she was by no means 
ignorant of the best things in that line in the outside world. 
Thrown into the crucible of her forceful mentality, the 
characters of fiction had emerged as far more living beings 
than the men and women who passed us now and then 
on the road — ^immensely more so, it was evident, though 
she did not say so, than the husband who plodded behind 
us, frankly admitting by his very attitude that we had 
entered waters hopelessly beyond his depth. Of all the 
restrictions the war had brought, none had struck her quite 
so directly as the decrease in quality and number of the 
plays at Munich's municipal theater. Luckily they were 
now improving. But she always had to go alone. He — 
with a toss of her head to the rear — didn't care for anything 
but the movies. He laughed himself sick over those. 
As to opera, her greatest pleasure in life, he hadn't the 
faintest conception of what it was all about. He liked 
American ragtime (she pronounced it "rhakteam"), how- 
ever. Still, America had opera also, nicht wahr? Had not 
many of Germany's best singers gone to my country? 
There was Slezak, for instance, and Schumann-Heink and 
Farrar . . . 

261 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

I might have questioned her notion of the nationality 
of some of the names she mentioned, but what did it matter? 

Obviously it was a waste of breath to ask whether she 
was pleased with the change of events that had given 
Germany universal suffrage for both sexes. She had voted, 
of course, at the first opportunity, dragging him along with 
her; he had so little interest in those matters. Her political 
opinions were no less decided than her artistic. Ludwig? 
She had often seen him. He was rather a harmless individ- 
ual, but his position had not been harmless. It was a 
relief to be rid of him. and all his clan. He would have 
made a much better stable-boy than king. He had wanted 
war just as much as had the Kaiser, whose robber-knight 
blood had shown up in him. But the Kaiser had not 
personally been so guilty as some others, Ludendorff, for 
instance . . . and so on. The Crown Prince! A clown, 
a disgrace to Germany. Nobody had ever loved the Crown 
Prince — except the women of a certain class. 

Bavaria would be much better off separated from the 
Empire. She was of the opinion that the majority of 
Bavarians preferred it. At least they did in her circle, 
though the strict Catholics — she glanced half-way over her 
shoulder — perhaps did not. Republican, Sparticist, or 
Bolshevik — it didn't matter which, so long as they could 
get good, efficient rulers. So far they had been deplorably 
weak — no real leaders. The recent uprising in Munich had 
been something of a nuisance, to be sure. They were 
rather glad the government troops had come. But the 
soldiers were mostly Prussians, and once a Prussian gets in 
you can never pry him out again. 

We had reached the village of Hohenkammer, thirty-five 
kilometers out, which I had chosen as my first stopping- 
place. My companion of an hour shook hands with what 
I flattered myself was a gesture of regret that our con- 
versation had been so brief, fell back into step with her 

362 




A BAVARIAN HOP-FIELD READY FOR THE CLIMBING VINES 




HOP-POLES SET UP FOR THE WINTER 



ON THE ROAD IN BAVARIA 

movie-and-ragtime-minded husband, and the pair disap- 
peared around the inn that bulged into a sharp turn of the 
highway. 

I entered the invitingly cool and homelike Gasthaus pre- 
pared to be coldly turned away. Innkeepers had often 
been exacting in their demands for credentials during my 
earlier journeys in Germany. With the first mug of beer, 
however, the portly landlady gave me permission — one 
can scarcely use a stronger expression than that for the 
casual way in which guests are accepted in Bavarian public- 
housed — to spend the night, and that without so much as 
referring to registration or proofs of identity. Then, after 
expressing her placid astonishment that I wanted to see 
it before bedtime, she sent a muscular, barefoot, but well- 
scrubbed kitchen-maid to show me into room No. i 
above. It was plainly furnished with two small wooden 
bedsteads and the prime necessities, looked out on the broad 
highway and a patch of rolling fields beyond, and was as 
specklessly clean as are most Bavarian inns. 

Rumor had it that any stranger stopping overnight in a 
German village courted trouble if he neglected to report 
his presence to the Biirgermeister, as he is expected to do 
to the police in the cities. I had been omitting the latter 
formality on the strength of my Wilhelmstrasse pass. 
These literal countrymen, however, might not see the matter 
in the same light. Moreover, being probably the only 
stranger spending the night in Hohenkammer, my presence 
was certain to be common knowledge an hour after my 
arrival. I decided to forestall pertinent inquiries by taking 
the lead in making them. 

The building a few yards down the highway bearing 
the placard "Wohnung des Biirgermeisters " was a simple, 
one-story, whitewashed cottage, possibly the least imposing 
dwelling in town. These village rulers, being chosen by 
popular vote within the community, are apt to be its least 

263 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

pompous citizens, both because the latter do not care to 
accept an unpaid office and because the "plain people" 
hold the voting majority. The woman who tried in vain 
to silence a howling child and a barking dog before she 
came to the door in answer to my knock was just a shade 
better than the servant class. The husband she summoned at 
my request was a peasant slightly above the general level. 

He took his time in coming and greeted, me coldly, a 
trifle sharply. One felt the German official in his attitude, 
with its scorn for the mere petitioner, the law's underling, 
the subject class. Had I reported my arrival in town in 
the regulation manner, he would have kept that attitude. 
I should have been treated as something between a mild 
criminal and an unimportant citizen whom the law had 
required to submit himself to the Biirgermeister's good 
pleasure. Instead, I assumed the upper caste myself. 
I drew forth a visiting-card and handed it to him with a 
regal gesture, at the same time addressing him in my most 
haughty, university-circles German. He glanced at my 
unapologetic countenance, stared at the card, then back 
into my stern face, his official manner oozing slowly but 
steadily away, like the rotundity of a lightly punctured tire. 
By the time I began to speak again he had shrunk to his 
natural place in society, that of a simple, hard-working 
peasant whom chance had given an official standing. 

The assertion that I was a traveling correspondent meant 
little more to him than did the card which he was still turning 
over and over in his stubby fingers like some child's puzzle. 
The Germans are not accustomed to the go-and-hunt 
method of gathering information to satisfy popular curiosity 
concerning the ways of foreign lands. I must find a better 
excuse for coming to Hohenkammer or I should leave him 
as puzzled as the card had. A brilliant idea struck me. 
On the strength of the "Hoover crowd" letter in my pocket, 
I informed him that I was walking through Germany to 

264 



ON THE ROAD IN BAVARIA 

study food conditions, wording the statement in a way that 
caused him to assume that I had been officially sent on 
such a mission. He fell into the trap at once. From the 
rather neutral, unofficial, yet unresponsive attitude to which 
my unexpected introduction had reduced him he changed 
quickly to a bland, eager manner that showed genuine in- 
terest. Here was an American studying food conditions; 
Germany was anxiously awaiting food from America; it 
was up to him, as the ruler of Hohenkammer, to put his 
best foot forward and give me all the information I desired. 
Here in the country, he began, people had never actually 
suffered for want of food. They had lived better than he 
had during his four years at the front. Fats were the only 
substance of which there was any serious want. Milk was 
also needed, but they could get along. They did not suifer 
much for lack of meat; there were tickets for it here in the 
country also, but they were issued only after the meat each 
family got by slaughtering its own animals had been 
reckoned out. Some families got no food-tickets whatever, 
unless it was for bread. They were what Germans call 
Selbstbesorger ("self -providers") — that is, the great majority 
of the peasants and all the village residents except the shop- 
keepers who cultivated no land, the priest, the schoolmaster, 
and so on. No, they had not received any American bacon 
or any other Lebensmittel; every one took that to be a joke, 
something the Allies were dangling before their eyes to 
keep them good-natured. He had never actually believed 
before I turned up on this official mission for studying the 
food situation that America actually meant to send food. 
Yes, he had been on the western front the entire war, 
fifty-two months in the trenches, and never once wounded. 
His first Americans he had seen at St.-Mihiel; as soldiers 
they seemed to be pretty good, but of course I must not 
forget that the German army was far different in 191 8 
from what it was in 19 14. He very much doubted whether 

265 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

Americans could have driven them back in those days. 
More likely it would have been the opposite. 

As I turned to go he took his leave with a mixture of 
deference and friendliness. He had not asked to see the 
papers bearing out all these statements I had been making, 
but there was a hint in the depth of his eyes that he felt it 
his duty to do so, if only he could venture to make such 
a demand of so highly placed a personage. I went far 
enough away to make sure he would not have the courage 
to demand them — which would have been his first act 
had I approached him as a mere traveler — then turned back, 
drawing the documents from a pocket as if I had just thought 
of them. He glanced at them in a most apologetic manner, 
protesting the while that of course he had never for an instant 
doubted my word, and returned them with a deferential bow. 

All in all, this plan of posing as an official scout of the 
"Amerikanische Lebensmittel Kommission" had been a 
brilliant idea, marked with a success that moved me to use 
the same innocent ruse a score of times when any other 
means of gathering information might have been frustrated. 
One must have a reasonable excuse for traveling on foot in 
Germany. To pretend to be doing so for lack of funds 
would be absurd, since fourth-class fare costs an infinitesimal 
sum, much less than the least amount of food one could live 
on for the same distance. The only weakness in my simple 
little trick was the frequent question as to why the Americans 
who had sent me out on my important mission had not fur- 
nished me a bicycle. The German roads were so good ; one 
could cover so much more ground on a Fahrrad. . . . Driven 
into that corner, there was no other defense but to mumble 
something about how much more closely the foot traveler 
can get in touch with the plain people, or to take advan- 
tage of some fork in the conversation to change the subject. 

When I returned to the inn, the "guest-room" was 
crowded. Stocky, sun-browned countrymen of all ages, 

266 



ON THE ROAD IN BAVARIA 

rather slow of wit, chatting of the simple topics of the farm 
in their misshapen Bavarian dialect, were crowded around 
the half-dozen plain wooden tables that held their immense 
beer-mugs, while the air was opaque with the smoke from 
their long-stemmed porcelain pipes. The entrance of a 
total stranger was evidently an event to the circle. The 
rare guests who spent the night in Hohenkammer were 
nearly always teamsters or peddlers who traveled the 
same route so constantly that their faces were as familiar 
as those of the village residents. As each table in turn 
caught sight of me, the conversation died down like a 
motor that had slowly been shut off, until the most absolute 
silence reigned. How long it might have lasted would be 
hard to guess. It had already grown decidedly oppressive 
when I turned to my nearest neighbor and broke the ice 
with some commonplace remark. He answered with extreme 
brevity and an evidence of something between bashfulness 
and a deference tinged with suspicion. Several times I 
broke the silence which followed each reply before these 
reached the dignity of full sentences. It was like starting 
a motor on a cold morning. Bit by bit, however, we got 
under way; others joined in, and in something less than a 
half -hour we were buzzing along full speed ahead, the entire 
roomful adding their voices to the steady hum of con- 
versation which my appearance had interrupted. 

Thus far I had not mentioned my nationality at the inn, 
being in doubt whether the result would be to increase 
our conversational speed or bring it to a grating and sudden 
halt. When I did, it was ludicrously like the shifting of 
gears. The talk slowed down for a minute or more, while 
the information I had vouchsafed passed from table to table 
in half -audible whispers, then sped ahead more noisily, if 
less swiftly, than before. On the whole, curiosity was 
chiefly in evidence. There was perhaps a bit of wonder 
and certainly some incredulity in the simple, gaping faces, 

267 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

but quite as surely no signs of enmity or resentment. Be- 
fore long the table at which I sat was doubly crowded and 
questions as to America and her ways were pouring down 
upon me in a flood which it was quite beyond the power of 
a single voice to stem. Friendly questions they certainly 
were, without even a suggestion of the sarcasm one some- 
times caught a hint of in more haughty German circles. 
Yet in the gathering were at least a score of men who had 
been more or less injured for life in a struggle which they 
themselves admitted the nation I represented had turned 
against them. I have been so long absent from my native 
land that I cannot quite picture to myself what would 
happen to the man who thus walked in upon a gathering 
of American farmers, boldly announcing himself a German 
just out of the army, but something tells me he would not 
have passed so perfectly agreeable an evening as I did in 
the village inn of Hohenkammer 

With my third mug of beer the landlord himself sat down 
beside me. Not, of course — prohibition forbid! — that I 
had ordered a third pint of beer in addition to the two that 
the plump matron had served me with a very satisfying 
supper. In fact, I had not once mentioned the subject of 
beverages. Merely to take one's seat at any inn table in 
Bavaria is equivalent to shouting, "Glas Bier!^' No ques- 
tions were asked, but mine host — so far more often mine 
hostess — is as certain to set a foaming mug before the new 
arrival as he — or she — is to abhor the habit of drinking 
water; and woe betide the man who drains what he hopes 
is his last mug without rising instantly to his feet, for some 
sharp-eyed member of the innkeeper's family circle is sure 
to thrust another dripping beaker under his chin before he 
can catch his breath to protest. On the other hand, no 
one is forced to gage his thirst by that of his neighbors, as 
in many a less placid land. The treating habit is slightly 
developed in rural Bavaria. On very special occasions 

268 



ON THE ROAD IN BAVARIA 

some one may "set 'em up" for the friend beside him, or 
even for three or four of his cronies, but it is the almost 
invariable rule that each client call for his own reckoning 
at the end of the evening. 

The innkeeper had returned at late dusk from tilling his 
fields several miles away. Like his fellows throughout 
Bavaria, he was a peasant except by night and on holidays. 
During the working-day the burden, if it could be called one, 
of his urban establishment fell upon his wife and children. 
It was natural, therefore, that the topic with which he wedged 
his way into the conversation should have been that of 
husbandry. Seeds, he asserted, were still fairly good, 
fortunately, though in a few species the war had left them 
sadly inferior. But the harvest would be poor this year. 
The coldest spring in as far back as he could remember 
had lasted much later than ever before. Then, instead of 
the rain they should have had, scarcely a drop had fallen 
and things were already beginning to shrivel. As if they 
had not troubles enough as it was! With beer gone up to 
sixteen pfennigs a pint instead of the ten of the good old 
days before the war! And such beer! Hardly 3 per cent, 
alcohol in it now instead of 11! The old peasants had 
stopped drinking it entirely — the very men who had been 
his best customers. They distilled a home-made Schnapps 
now, and stayed at home to drink it. Naturally such weak 
stuff as this — he held up his half -empty mug with an 
expression of disgust on his face — could not satisfy the old- 
fashioned Bavarian taste. Before the war he had served 
an average of a thousand beers a day. Now he drew barely 
two hundred. And as fast as business fell off taxes increased. 
He would give a good deal to know where they were going 
to end. Especially now, with these ridiculous terms the 
Allies were asking Germany to sign. How could they 
sign? It would scarcely leave them their shirt and trousers. 
And they, the peasants and country people, would have 

269 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

to pay for it, they and the factory hands ; not the big- 
wigs in Berlin and Essen who were so ready to accept 
England's challenge. No, it would not pay Bavaria to 
assert her independence. They did not love the northern 
German, but when all was said and done it would be better 
to stick with him. 

Suddenly the brain-racking dialect in which the Wirt 
and his cronies had been sharing their views on this and 
other subjects halted and died down to utter silence, with 
that same curious similarity to a shut-off motor that my 
entrance had caused. I looked about me, wondering what 
I had done to bring on this new stillness. Every man in the 
room had removed his hat and all but two their porcelain 
pipes. Except for the latter, who puffed faintly and noise- 
lessly now and then, the whole assembly sat perfectly 
motionless. For a moment or more I was puzzled; then a 
light suddenly broke upon me. The bell of the village 
church was tolling the end of evening vespers. 

Hohenkammer, like the majority of Bavarian towns, 
was a strictly Catholic community. The women, from the 
barefoot kitchen servant to the highest lady of the village, 
had slipped quietly off to church while their husbands 
gathered in the Gasthaus, and the latter were now showing 
their respect for the ceremony they had attended by proxy. 
They sat erect, without a bowed head among them, but in 
the motionless silence of "living statues," except that 
toward the end, as if in protest that their good crony, the 
village priest, should take undue advantage of his position 
and prolong their pose beyond reason with his persistent 
tolling, several squirmed in their seats, and two, possibly 
the free-thinkers of the community, hawked and spat 
noisily and what seemed a bit ostentatiously. As the 
ringing ceased, each clumsily crossed himself rather hastily, 
slapped his hat back upon his head, and the buzz of con- 
versation rapidly rose again to its previous volume. 

270 




ON THE ROAD IN BAVARIA, NEAR MUNICH 




A SMALL PART OF THE CROWD OF SCHOOL-BOYS WHO GATHERED AROUND ME 
IN A BAVARIAN VILLAGE 



XIII 



INNS AND BYWAYS 



A BRILLIANT, almost tropical sun, staring in upon me 
■**• through flimsy white cotton curtains, awoke me soon 
after five. Country people the world over have small pa- 
tience with late risers, and make no provision for guests 
who may have contracted that bad habit. My companions 
of the night before had long since scattered to their fields 
when I descended to the Gastzimmer, veritably gleaming 
with the sand-and-water polish it had just received. The 
calmly busy landlady solicitously inquired how I had slept, 
and while I forced down my "breakfast" of Ersatz coffee 
and diill-brown peasant bread she laid before me the inn 
register, a small, flat ledger plainly bearing the marks of its 
profession in the form of beer and grease stains on its cover 
and first pages. I had been mistaken in supposing that 
Bavaria's change to a republic had dispensed with that 
once important formality. In fact, I recall but one public 
lodging on my German journey where my personal history- 
was not called for before my departure. But there was 
nothing to have hindered me from assuming a fictitious 
identity. When I had scrawled across the page under the 
hieroglyphics of previous guests the half-dozen items 
required by the police, the hostess laid the book away 
without so much as looking at the new entry. My bill 
for supper, lodging, "breakfast," and four pints of beer 
was five marks and seventy-two pfennigs, and the order- 

271 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

loving Frau insisted on scooping out of her satchel the 
last tiny copper to make the exact change before she wished 
me good day and a pleasant journey. 

The single village street, which was also the main high- 
way, was thronged with small boys slowly going to 
school when I stepped out into the flooding sunshine soon 
after seven. One of the most striking sights in Germany 
is the flocks of children everywhere, in spite of the wastage 
of more than four years of war and food scarcity. Cer- 
tainly none of these plump little "square-heads" showed 
any evidence of having suffered from hunger; compared 
with the pale, anemic urchins of large cities they were in- 
deed pictures of health. They resembled the latter as ripe 
tomatoes resemble gnarled and half-grown green apples. 
At least half of them wore some portion of army uniform, 
cut down from the war-time garb of their elders, no doubt, 
the round, red-banded cap covered nearly every head, and 
many carried their books and coarse lunches in the hairy 
cowhide knapsacks of the trenches, usually with a cracked 
slate and the soiled rag with which they wiped their exer- 
cises off it swinging from a strap at the rear. They showed 
as much curiosity at the sight of a stranger in town as their 
fathers had the night before, but when I stealthily opened 
my kodak and strolled slowly toward them they stampeded 
in a body and disappeared pellmell within the school- 
house door. 

The sun was already high in the cloudless sky. It would 
have been hard to imagine more perfect weather. The 
landscape, too, was entrancing; gently rolling fields deep- 
green with spring alternating with almost black patches 
of evergreen forests, through which the broad, light-gray 
highroad wound and undulated as soothingly as an immense 
ocean-liner on a slowly pulsating sea. Every few miles a 
small town rose above the horizon, now astride the highway, 
now gazing down upon it from a sloping hillside. Wonder- 

272 



INNS AND BYWAYS 

fully clean towns they were, speckless from their scrubbed 
floors to their whitewashed church steeples, all framed in 
velvety green meadows or the fertile fields in which their 
inhabitants of both sexes plodded diligently but never 
hurriedly through the labors of the day. It was difficult 
to imagine how these simple, gentle-spoken folk could 
have won a world-wide reputation as the most savage and 
brutal warriors in modem history. 

Toward noon appeared the first of Bavaria's great hop- 
fields, the plants that would climb house-high by August 
now barely visible. In many of them the hop-frames 
were still being set up — vast networks of poles taller than 
the telegraph lines along the way, crisscrossed with more 
slender crosspieces from which hung thousands of thin 
strings ready for the climbing vines. The war had affected 
even this bucolic industry. Twine, complained a peasant 
with whom I paused to chat, had more than quadrupled 
in price, and one was lucky at that not to find the stuff 
made of paper when the time came to use it. In many a 
field the erection of the frames had not yet begun, and 
the poles still stood in clusters strikingly resembling Indian 
wigwams, where they had been stacked after the harvest 
of the September before. 

At Pfaffenhofen, still posing as a "food controller," I 
dropped in on a general merchant. The ruse served as 
an opening to extended conversation here even better 
than it had in the smaller town behind. The Kaujmann 
was almost too eager to impress me, and through me 
America, with the necessity of replenishing his shrunken 
stock. He reiterated that fats, soap, rice, soup materials, 
milk, cocoa and sugar were most lacking, and in the order 
named. Then there was tobacco, more scarce than any 
of these, except perhaps fats. If only America would send 
them tobacco! In other lines? Well, all sorts of clothing 
materials were needed, of course they had been hoping 

273 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

ever since the armistice that America would send them 
cotton. People were wearing all manner of Ersatz cloth. 
He took from his show-window what looked like a very- 
coarse cotton shirt, but which had a brittle feel, and. spread 
it out before me. It was made of nettles. Sometimes the 
lengthwise threads were cotton and the cross threads 
nettle, which made a bit more durable stuff, but he could 
not say much even for that. As to the nettle shirt before 
me, he sold it for fourteen marks because he refused to 
accept profit on such stuff. But what good was such a 
shirt to the peasants? They wore it a few days, washed it 
once and — kaput, finished, it crumpled together like burnt 
paper. Many children could no longer go to school; their 
clothes had been patched out of existence. During the war 
there had been few marriages in the rural districts because, 
the boys being away at war, a fair division of the inheri- 
tances could not be made even when the girls found matches. 
Now many wanted to marry, but most of them found it im- 
possible because they could not get any bed-linen or many 
of the other things that are necessary to establish a house- 
hold. No, he did not think there had been any great 
increase in irregularities between the sexes because of war 
conditions, at least not in such well-to-do farming com- 
munities as the one about Pfaffenhofen. He had heard, 
however, that in the large cities . . . 

The Bavarians are not merely great lovers of flowers; 
they have no hesitancy in showing that fondness, as is so 
often the case with less simple people. The house window, 
be it only that of the humblest little crossroads inn, which 
was not gay with blossoms of a half-dozen species was a 
curiosity. About every house, in every yard were great 
bushes of lilac, hydrangea, and several other flowering 
shrubs; add to this the fact that all fruit-trees were just 
then in full bloom and it will be less difficult to picture the 
veritable flower-garden through which I was tram.ping. 

274 



INNS AND BYWAYS 

Nor were the inhabitants satisfied to let inanimate nature 
alone decorate herself with spring. The sourest-looking old 
peasant was almost sure to have a cluster of flowers tucked 
into a shirt buttonhole or the lapel of his well-worn jacket; 
girls and women decked themselves out no more universally 
than did the males of all ages, from the tottering urchin 
not yet old enough to go to school to the doddering grand- 
father leaning his gnarled hands on his home-made cane 
in the shade of the projecting house eaves. Men and boys 
wore them most often in the bands of their curious slouch- 
hats, beside the turkey feather or the shaving-brush with 
which the Bavarian headgear is frequently embellished the 
year round. 

In each village a new May-pole towered above everything 
else, often visible when the hamlet itself was quite out of 
sight. On the first day of the month that of the year 
before had been cut down and the tallest pine-tree available, 
trimmed of its branches except for a little tuft at the top, 
had been set up before the chief Gasthaus, amid celebrations 
that included the emptying of many kegs of beer. Its 
upper half encircled with wreaths, streamers, and winding, 
flower- woven lianas, and decorated with a dozen flags, it 
suggested at a distance the totem-pole of some childlike 
tropical tribe rather than the plaything of a plodding and 
laborious people of western Europe. 

I set my pace in a way to bring me into the larger towns 
at noon and to some quaint and quiet village at nightfall. 
In the latter, one was surer to find homelike accommoda- 
tions and simpler, more naive people with whom to chat 
through the evening. The cities, even of only a few thousand 
inhabitants, too nearly resembled Berlin or Munich to 
prove of continued interest. The constant traveler, too, 
comes to abhor the world-wide sameness of city hotels. 
Moreover, the larger the town the scantier was the food 
in the Germany of 191 9. The guest who sat down to an 
19 275 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

excellently cooked dinner of a thick peasant soup, a man's 
size portion of beef, veal, or pork, potatoes in unlimited 
quantity, bread that was almost white and made of real 
wheat, and a few other vegetables thrown in, all for a cost 
of two marks, might easily have imagined that all this 
talk of food shortage was mere pretense. Surely this last 
month before the beginning of harvest, in the last year 
of the war, with the question of signing or not signing the 
peace terms throbbing through all Germany, was the time 
of all times to find a certain answer to the query of the out- 
side world as to the truth of the German's cry of starvation. 
But the answer one found in the smaller villages of Bavaria 
would have been far from the true one of the nation at 
large. 

Now and then my plans went wrong. Conditions dif- 
fered, even in two towns of almost identical appearance. 
Thus at Ingolstadt, which was large enough to have been 
gaunt with hunger, there was every evidence of plenty. 
Here I had expected trouble also of another sort. The 
town was heavily garrisoned, as it had been even before the 
war. Soldiers swarmed everywhere; at the inn where my 
tramping appetite was so amply satisfied they surrounded 
me on every side. I was fully prepared to be halted at 
any moment, perhaps to be placed under arrest. Instead, 
the more openly I watched military maneuvers, the more 
boldly I put questions to the youths in uniform, the less I 
was suspected. In Reichertshofen the night before, where 
I had sat some time in silence, reading, in a smoke-clouded 
beer-hall crowded with laborers from the local mills, far 
more questioning glances had been cast in my direction. 

On the other hand the hamlet I chose for the night some- 
times proved a bit too small. One must strike a careful 
average or slip from the high ridge of plenitude. Denken- 
dorf, an afternoon's tramp north of the garrison city, was- 
so tiny that the waddling old landlady gasped at my placid 

276 



INNS AND BYWAYS 

assumption that of course she could serve me supper. 
Beer, to be sure, she could furnish me as long as the evening 
lasted ; das heste Zimmer — the very best room in the house — 
and it was almost imposing in its speckless solemnity — 
I could have all to myself, if I cared to pay as high as a whole 
mark for the night! But food . . . She mumbled and 
shook her head, waddled like a matronly old duck back and 
forth between the "guest-room" and the kitchen, with its 
massive smoked beams and medieval appliances, she 
brought me more beer, she pooh-poohed my suggestion that 
the chickens and geese that flocked all through the hamlet 
might offer a solution to the problem, and at length dis- 
appeared making some inarticulate noise that left me in 
doubt whether she had caught an idea or had decided to 
abandon me to my hungry fate. 

The short night had fallen and I had fully reconciled 
myself to retiring supperless when the kitchen door let in a 
feeble shaft of light which silhouetted my cask-shaped hostess 
approaching with something in her hands. No doubt she 
was foisting another mug of beer upon me! My mistake. 
With a complacent grunt she placed on the no longer visible 
table two well-filled plates and turned to light a strawlike 
wick protruding from a fiat bottle of grease. By its slight 
rays I made out a heaping portion of boiled potatoes and 
an enormous Pfannkuchen — the German cross between an 
omelet and a pancake. It must have been a robust appe- 
tite indeed that did not succumb before this substitute 
for the food which Denkendorf , in the opinion of the land- 
lady, so entirely lacked. 

Meanwhile I had made a new acquaintance. A young 
soldier in the uniform of a sergeant had for some time been 
my only companion in the "guest-room." His face sug- 
gested intelligence and an agreeable personality. For a 
long time we both sipped our beer in silence at opposite 
tables. I broke the ice at last, well aware that he would 

277 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

not have done so had we sat there all night. As in the 
older sections of our own country, so in the Old World it 
is not the custom to speak unnecessarily to strangers. 

He answered my casual remark with a smile, however, 
rose, and, carrying his mug of beer with him, sat down on 
the opposite side of my table. I took pains to bring out 
my nationality at the first opportunity. 

"American?" he cried, with the nearest imitation I had 
yet heard in Germany of the indignant surprise I had 
always expected that information to evoke, "and what are 
you doing here?" 

There was something more than mere curiosity in his 
voice, though his tone could not quite have been called angry. 
It was more nearly the German official guttural. I smiled 
placidly as I answered, throwing in a hint, as usual, about 
the food commission. He was instantly mollified. He 
did not even suggest seeing my papers, though he announced 
himself the traveling police force of that region, covering 
some ten small towns. Within five minutes we were as 
deep in conversation as if we had discovered ourselves to 
be friends of long standing. He was of a naturally sociable 
disposition, like all Bavarians, and his sociability was dis- 
tinctly enhanced when I shared with him my last nibble 
of chocolate and "split" with him one of my rare American 
cigars. He had not had a smoke in a week, not even an 
Ersatz one; and it was at least a year since he had tasted 
chocolate. In return for my appalling sacrifice he insisted 
on presenting me with the two eggs he had been able to 
"hamster" during that day's round of duty. When I 
handed them to the caisson-built landlady with instruc- 
tions to serve us one each in the morning, my relations 
with the police-soldier were established on a friendly basis 
for life. 

Before bedtime we had reached the point where he turned 
his revolver over to me, that I might satisfy my curiosity 

278 



INNS AND BYWAYS 

as to its inner workings. In return I spread all but one 
of my official and pseudo-official papers out before him 
in the flickering light of the grease wick, not because he had 
made any formal request to see them, but that I might keep 
him amused, as one holds the interest of a baby by flashing 
something gaudy before it or holding a ticking watch to its 
ear. Not, let it be plainly understood, that my new friend 
was of low intellectual level. Far from it. A Niirnberger 
of twenty-five who had seen all the war, on several fronts, 
he was judicious and "keen," quite equal to his new posi- 
tion as country gendarme. But there is something naive, 
baby like in the Bavarian character even after it has been 
tempered and remolded by wide and varied experience. 

The next morning he insisted on rising early to accompany 
me a few miles on my journey. He expressed his astonish- 
ment that I carried no weapon, and though he laughed at 
the notion that I was in any danger without one, he did 
not propose that anything, should befall me on his "beat." 
As we advanced, our conversation grew more serious. He 
was not quite ready to admit that Germany had started 
the war, but he was forceful in his assertion that the capi- 
talists and the "Old German" party had wanted it. The 
working-class, he insisted, would never have gone into the 
war if those higher up had not made them think Germany 
had been treacherously attacked, that England and France 
had determined to annihilate her. He was still not wholly 
convinced that those were not the facts, but he was enraged 
at what he insisted were the crimes of the capitaHsts. It 
goes without saying that he was a Socialist, his leanings 
being toward the conservative side of that widely spread 
party. He told several tales of fraternization with French 
soldiers of similar opinions during his years in the trenches. 
The republican idea, he asserted, had been much in evi- 
dence among the working-classes long before the war, 
but it had never dared openly show its head. For German 

279 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

rulers, from Kaiser and princes down to his own army officers, 
he had the bitterest scorn. Their first and foremost interest 
in Hfe he summed up under the head of "women." Some 
of his personal-knowledge anecdotes of the "high and 
mighty" were not fit to print. His opinions of German 
womanhood, or at least girlhood, were astonishingly low 
for a youth of so naive and optimistic a character. On the 
other hand he lapsed every little while into childlike boast- 
ing of Germany's military prowess, quite innocently, as one 
might point to the fertility or the sunshine of one's native 
land. The Germans had first used gas; they had been the 
first to invent gas-masks; they had air-raided the capitals 
of their enemies, sunk them at sea long before the slow- 
witted Allies had ever thought of any such weapons or 
contrivances. 

Some ten miles from our eating-place we drifted into the 
street-lanes of a huddled Httle village, older than the Ger- 
man Empire, in quest of the Gasthaus. Three hours of 
tramping are sufficient to recall the refreshing qualities of 
Bavarian beer. However reprehensible it may have been 
before the war, with its dreadful eleven percentage of alcohol, 
it was certainly a harmless beverage in 191 9, superior in 
attack on a roadside thirst even to nature's noblest sub- 
stitute, water. If the reader will promise not to use the 
evidence against me, I will confess that I emptied as many 
as eight pint mugs of beer during a single day of my German 
tramp, and was as much intoxicated at the end of it as I 
should have been with as many quarts of milk. Nor 
would the natural conclusion that I am impervious to 
strong drink be just ; the exact opposite is the bitter truth. 
The adult Bavarian who does not daily double, if not 
treble, my best performance is either an oddity or a com- 
plete financial failure, yet I have never seen one affected 
by his constant libations even to the point of increased 

gaiety. 

280 



INNS AND BYWAYS 

The justly criticized features of our saloons are quite un- 
known in the Bavarian Gasthduser. In the first place, they 
are patronized by both sexes and all classes, with the con- 
sequent improvement in character. On Sunday evening, 
after his sermon, the village priest or pastor, the latter 
accompanied by his wife, drops in for a pint before retiring 
to his well-earned rest. Rowdyism, foul language, ob- 
scenity either of word or act are as rare as in the family 
circle. Never having been branded society's black sheep, 
the Bavarian beer-hall is quite as respected and self-respect- 
ing a member of the community as any other business house. 
It is the village club for both sexes, with an atmosphere 
quite as ladylike as, if somewhat less effeminate, than, a sew- 
ing-circle; and it is certainly a boon to the thirsty traveler 
tramping the sun-flooded highways. All of which is not 
a plea for beer-drinking by those who do not care for the 
dreadful stufE, but merely a warning that personally I 
propose to continue the wicked habit as long — whenever, at 
least, I am tramping the roads of Bavaria. 

These village inns are all of the same type. A quaint and 
placid building with the mellowed atmosphere that comes 
with respectable old age, usually of two stories, always 
with an exceedingly steep roof from which peer a few dormer- 
windows, like wondering urchins perched in some place of 
vantage, is pierced through the center by a long, low, cool 
passageway that leads to the family garden or back yard. 
Just inside the street entrance this hallway is flanked by 
two doors, on one of which, in old Gothic letters, is the word 
' ' Gastzimmer ' ' (guest-room) . Thus the new-comer is spared 
the embarrassment of bursting in upon the intimacies of 
the family circle that would result from his entering the 
opposite door. The world has few public places as home- 
like as the cool and cozy room to which the placarded door 
gives admittance. Unpainted wooden tables, polished 
gleaming white with sand and water, fill the room without 

281 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

any suggestion of crowding. At one side sits a porcelain 
stove, square-faced and high, its surface broken into small 
square plaques, the whole shining intensely with its blue, 
blue-gray, or greenish tint. Beyond this, in a corner, a 
tall, old-time clock with weights tick-tacks with the dignified, 
placid serenity of quiet old age. Three or four pairs of 
antlers protrude from the walls ; several small mirrors, and a 
number of framed pictures, most of them painful to the 
artistic sense that has reached the first stage of development, 
break the soothingly tinted surfaces between them. In 
the comer behind the door is a small glass-faced cupboard 
in which hang the long, hand-decorated porcelain pipes 
of the local smoking-club, each with the name of its owner 
stenciled upon it. Far to the rear sits a middle-aged phono- 
graph with the contrite yet defiant air of a recent comer 
who realizes himself rather out of place and not over-popular 
in the conservative old society upon which he has forced 
himself. Deep window embrasures, gay with flowers in 
dull-red pots, hung with snowy little lace curtains, are 
backed by even more immaculate glass, in small squares. 
This bulges outwardly in a way to admit a maximum of 
light, yet is quite impenetrable from the outside, from where 
it merely throws back into the face of the would-be observer 
his own reflection. In the afternoon a powerfully built young 
woman, barefoot or shod only in low slippers, is almost 
certain to be found ironing at one of the tables. At the 
others sit a guest or two, their heavy glass or stone mugs 
before them. No fowls, dogs, or other domestic nuisances 
are permitted to enter, though the placid, Bavarian family 
cat is almost sure to look each new-comer over with a 
more or less disapproving air from her place of vantage 
toward the rear. It would take sharp eyes indeed to 
detect a fleck of dust, a beer stain, or the tiniest cobweb 
anywhere in the room. 

Over the door is a sign, as time-mellowed as an ancient 

282 



INNS AND BYWAYS 

painting, announcing the price of a liter of beer — risen to 
thirty-two or thirty-four pfennigs in these sad war-times — 
though seldom mentioning the beverage by name. That 
information is not needed in a community where other 
drinks are as strangers in a strange land. About the spigots 
at the rear hovers a woman who might resent being called 
old and fat, yet who would find it difficult to convince a 
critical observer that she could lay any claim to being 
either young or slender. As often as a guest enters to 
take his seat at a table, with a mumbled "Scoot" she 
waddles forward with a dripping half-liter mug of beer, 
bringing another the instant her apparently dull but really 
eagle eye catches sight of one emptied. At her waist hangs 
from a strap over the opposite shoulder a huge satchel-purse 
of ancient design from v/hich she scoops up a pudgy handful 
of copper and pewter coins whenever a guest indicates 
that he is ready to pay his reckoning, and dismisses him 
with another "Scoot" as he opens the door. From a score 
to a hundreQ times an hour, depending on the time of day, 
the size of the village, and the popularity of that particular 
establishment, a bell tinkles and she waddles to a little 
trap-door near the spigots to fill the receptacle that is handed 
in by some neighbor, usually an urchin or a disheveled 
little girl barely tall enough to peer in at the waist-high 
opening, and thrusts it out again as she drops another 
handful of copper coins into her capacious wallet. 

They are always named in huge letters on the street 
fagade, these Bavarian Gasthduser: "Zum Rothen Hahn" 
("To the Red Rooker"), "ZumGrauen Ross" ("To the 
Gray Steed"), "To the Golden Star," "To the Black Bear," 
"To the Golden Angel," "To the Blue Grapes," "To the 
White Swan," "To the Post," and so on through all the 
colors of the animal, vegetable, and heavenly kingdom. 
Whether in reference to the good old days when Bavaria's 
beer was more elevating in its strength, or merely an evidence 

283 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY ^ 

of the mixture of the poetic and the reHgious in the native 
character, one of the favorite names is "To the Ladder of 
Heaven." 

In the evening the interior scene changes somewhat. 
The laundress has become a serving-maid, the man of the 
house has returned from his fields and joins his waddling 
spouse in carrying foaming mugs from spigots to trap-door 
or to tables, crowded now with muscular, sun-browned 
peasants languid from the labors of the day. Then is the 
time that a rare traveling guest may ask to be shown to 
one of the clean and simple little chambers above. The 
wise man will always seek one of these inns of the olden 
days in which to spend the night, even in cities large enough 
to boast more presumptuous quarters. The establishment 
announcing itself as a "Hotel" is certain to be several 
times more expensive, often less clean and comfortable, 
superior only in outward show, and always far less home- 
like than the modest Gasthaus. 

It may have been imagination, but I fandted I saw a 
considerable variation in types in different villages. In 
some almost every inhabitant seemed broad-shouldered and 
brawny ; in others the under-sized prevailed. This particu- 
lar hamlet in which the police-soldier and I took our fare- 
well glass appeared to be the gathering-place of dwarfs. 
At any rate, a majority of those I caught sight of could 
have walked under my outstretched arm. It may be that 
the war had carried off the full-grown, or they may have been 
away tilling the fields. The head of the inn family, aged 
sixty or more, was as exact a copy of the gnomes whom Rip 
van Winkle found playing ninepins as the most experienced 
stage manager could have chosen and costumed. Hunched 
back, hooked nose, short legs, long, tasseled, woolen knit 
cap, whimsical smile and all, he was the exact picture of 
those play-people of our childhood fairy-books. Indeed, 
he went them one better, for the long vest that covered his 

284 



INNS AND BYWAYS 

unnatural expanse of chest gleamed with a score of buttons 
fashioned from silver coins of centuries ago, of the size of 
half-dollars. He sold me an extra one, at the instigation of 
my companion, for the appalling price of two marks! It 
proved to date back to the days when Spain held chief 
sway over the continent of Europe. His wife was his 
companion even in appearance and suggested some medieval 
gargoyle as she paddled in upon us, clutching a froth-topped 
stone mug in either dwarfish hand. She had the fairy-tale 
kindness of heart, too, for when my companion suggested 
that his thirst was no greater than his hunger she duck-footed 
noiselessly away and returned with a generous wedge of her 
own bread. It was distinctly brown and would not have 
struck the casual American observer as a delicacy, but the 
Niirnberger fell upon it with a smacking of the lips and a 
joyful : ' Wa/ Das ist Bauernbrod — genuine peasant's bread. 
You don't get that in the cities, na!" 

He took his final leave at the top of the rise beyond the 
village, deploring the fact that he could not continue with 
me to Berlin and imploring me to come again some other 
year when we could tramp the Bavarian hills together. 
When I turned and looked back, nearly a half-mile beyond, 
he stood in the selfsame spot, and he snatched off his red- 
banded fatigue cap and waved it half gaily, half sadly 
after me. 

Miles ahead, over a mountainous ridge shaded by a cool 
and murmuring evergreen forest, I descended through the 
fields toward Beilngries, a reddish patch on the landscape 
ahead. A glass-clear brook that was almost a river hurried 
away across the meadow. I shed my clothes and plunged 
into it. A thin man was wandering along its grassy bank 
like a poet hunting inspiration or a victim of misfortune 
seeking solace for his tortured spirit. I overtook him soon 
after I had dressed. His garb was not that of a Bavarian 
villager; his manner and his speech suggested a Prussian, 

28s 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

or at least a man from the north. I expected him to show 
more curiosity at sight of a wandering stranger than had the 
simple countrymen of the region. When I accosted him 
he asked if the water was cold and lapsed into silence. I 
made a casual reference to my walk from Munich. In 
any other country the mere recital of that distance on foot 
would have aroused astonishment. He said he had himself 
been fond of walking in his younger days. I implied in a 
conversational footnote that I was bound for Berlin. He 
assured me the trip would take me through some pleasant 
scenery. I emphasized my accent until a man of his class 
must have recognized that I was a foreigner. He remarked 
that these days were sad days for Germany. I worked 
carefully up to the announcement, in the most dramatic 
manner I could command, that I was an American recently 
discharged from the army. He hoped I would carry home a 
pleasant impression of German landscapes, even if I did 
not find the country what it had once been in other respects. 
As we parted at the edge of the town he deplored the 
scarcity and high price of food, shook hands limply, and 
wished me a successful journey. In other words, there was 
no means of arousing his interest, to say nothing of surprise 
or resentment, that the citizen of a country with which his 
own was still at war should be wandering freely with kodak 
and note-book through his Fatherland. His attitude was 
that of the vast majority of Germans I met on my journey, 
and to this day I have not ceased to wonder why their at- 
titude should have been so indifferent. Had the whole 
country been starved out of the aggressive, suspicious man- 
ner of the Kaiser days, or was there truth in the assertion 
that they had always considered strangers honored guests 
and treated them as such ? More likely the form of govern- 
ment under which they had so long lived had left the in- 
dividual German the impression that personally it was no 
affair of his, that it was up to the officials who had appointed 

286 



INNS AND BYWAYS 

themselves over him to attend to such matters, while the 
government itself had grown so weak and disjointed that 
it took no cognizance of wandering strangers. 

Whatever else may be said of them, the Germans cer- 
tainly are a hard-working, diligent people, even in the midst 
of calamities. Boys of barely fourteen followed the plow 
from dawn to dark of these long northern summer days. 
Laborers toiled steadily at road-mending, at keeping in 
repair the material things the Kaiser regime had left them, 
as ambitiously as if the thought had never occurred to 
them that all this labor might in the end prove of advantage 
only to their enemies. Except that the letters "P. G." 
or "P. W. " were not painted on their garments, there was 
nothing to distinguish these gangs of workmen in fields 
and along the roads from the prisoners of war one had 
grown so accustomed to see at similar tasks in France. 
They wore the same patched and discolored field gray, 
the same weather-faded fatigue caps. How those red- 
banded caps had permeated into the utmost comers of 
the land! 

Between Beilngries and Bershing, two attractive towns 
with more than their share of food and comfort in the Ger- 
many of armistice days, I left the highway for the towpath 
of the once famous Ludwig Canal that parallels it. To all 
appearances this had long since been abandoned as a means 
of transportation. Nowhere in the many miles I followed it 
did I come upon a canal-boat, though its many locks were 
still in working order and the lock-tenders' dwellings still 
inhabited. The disappearance of canal-boats may have 
been merely temporary, as was that of automobiles, of which 
I remember seeing only three during all my tramp in Ger- 
many, except those in the military service. 

For a long time I trod the carpet-like towpath without 
meeting or overtaking any fellow-traveler. It was as if I 
had discovered some unknown and perfect route of my own. 

287 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

The mirror surface of the canal beside me pictured my 
movements far more perfectly than any cinema film, repro- 
ducing every slightest tint and color. Now and again I 
halted to stretch out on the grassy slope at the edge of the 
water, in the all-bathing sunshine. Snow-white cherry- 
trees were slowly, regretfully shedding their blossoms, 
flecking the ground and here and there the edge of the 
canal with their cast-off petals. Bright-pink apple-trees, 
just coming into full bloom, were humming with myriad 
bees. A few birds sang gaily, yet a bit drowsily, falling 
wholly silent now and then, as if awed by nature's loveli- 
ness. A weather-browned woman, her head covered with a 
clean white kerchief with strands of apple-blossom pink 
in it, knelt at the edge of the waterway a bit farther on, 
cutting the long grass with a little curved sickle, her every 
motion, too, caught by the mirroring canal. Along the 
highway below tramped others of her species, bearing to 
town on their backs the green fodder similarly gathered, 
in long cone-shaped baskets or wrapped in a large cloth. 
One had heaped her basket high with bright-yellow mustard, 
splashing the whitish roadway as with a splotch of paint. 
Vehicles there were none, except the little handcarts drawn 
by barefoot women or children, and now and then a man 
sometimes similarly unshod. Oxen reddish against green 
meadows or whitish against the red soil were standing idle, 
knee-deep in grass or slowly plowing the gently rolling fields. 
Farther off, clumps of cattle ranging from dark brown to 
faint yellow speckled the rounded hillocks. Fields white 
with daisies, yellow with buttercups, lilac with some other 
species of small flower, vied with one another in beautifying 
the more distant landscape. Still farther off, the world 
was mottled with clumps of forest, in which mingled the 
black evergreen of perennial foliage with the light green 
of new leaves. An owl or some member of his family hooted 
contentedly from the nearest woods. Modest little houses. 



INNS AND BYWAYS 

with sharp, very-old-red roofs and whitewashed walls 
dulled by years of weather, stood in clusters of varying size 
on the sun-flooded hillsides. Nothing in the velvety, 
gentle scene, so different from the surly landscape of factory 
districts, suggested war, except now and again the red- 
banded caps of the men. The more wonder came upon 
me that these slow, simple country people with their never- 
failing greetings and their entire lack of warlike manner 
could have formed a part of the most militaristic nation in 
history. 



XIV 



FOOD WEASELS 



FOR some days past every person I met along the way, 
young or old, had bidden me good day with the all- 
embracing "Scoof ' . I had taken this at first to be an abbrevia- 
tion of "Es ist gut,'' until an innkeeper had explained it as 
a shortening of the medieval "Grilss GoW* ("May God's 
greeting go with you"). In mid-afternoon of this Saturday 
the custom suddenly ceased, as did the solitude of the tow- 
path. A group of men and women, bearing rucksacks, 
baskets, valises, and all manner of receptacles, appeared 
from under the flowery foliage ahead and marched past me 
at a more aggressive pace than that of the country people. 
Their garb, their manner, somewhat sour and unfriendly, 
particularly the absence of any form of greeting, dis- 
tinguished them from the villagers of the region. More 
and more groups appeared, some numbering a full dozen, 
following one another so closely as to form an almost con- 
tinual procession. Some marched on the farther bank 
of the canal, as if our own had become too crowded with 
traffic for comfort, all hurrying by me into the south, with 
set, perspiring faces. I took them to be residents of the 
larger towns beyond, returning from the end of a railway 
spur ahead with purchases from the Saturday-morning mar- 
ket at Niimberg. It was some time before I discovered that 
quite the opposite was the case. 

They were "hamsterers," city people setting out to scour 

290 




HAMSTERERS SETTING OUT ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON TO BUY FOOD IN 

THE COUNTRY 




FOOD WEASELS RETURNING FROM FORAGING THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

the country for food. "Hamster" is a German word for 
an animal of the weasel family, which squirms in and out 
through every possible opening in quest of nourishment. 
During the war it came to be the popular designation of 
those who seek to augment their scanty ticket-limited 
rations by canvassing among the peasants, until the term 
in all its forms, as noun, verb, adjective, has become a 
universally recognized bit of the language. Women with 
time to spare, children free from school, go "hamstering" 
any day of the week. But Saturday afternoon and Sunday, 
when the masses are relieved of their labors, is the time of 
a general exodus from every city in Germany. There is 
not a peasant in the land, I have been assured, who has not 
been regularly "hamstered" during the past two years. In 
their feverish quest the famished human weasels cross and 
crisscross their lines through all the Empire. "Hamsterers" 
hurrying north or east in the hope of discovering unfished 
waters pass "hamsterers" racing south or west bound on the 
same chiefly vain errand. Another difficulty adds to their 
misfortunes, however, and limits the majority to their own 
section of the country. It is not the cost of transportation, 
except in the case of those at the lowest financial ebb, for 
fourth-class fare is more than cheap and includes all the 
baggage the traveler can lug with him. But any journey 
of more than twenty-five kilometers requires the permission 
of the local authorities. Without their Ausweis the rail- 
ways will not sell tickets to stations beyond that distance. 
Hence the custom is to ride as far into the country as pos- 
sible, make a wide circle on foot, or sometimes on a bicycle, 
during the Sunday following, "hamstering" as one goes, and 
fetch up at the station again in time for the last train to 
the city. In consequence the regions within the attainable 
distance around large cities are so thoroughly "fished out" 
that the peasants receive new callers with sullen silence. 
I had been conscious of a sourness in the greetings of the 
20 291 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

country people all that Saturday, quite distinct from their 
cheery friendliness of the days before. Now it was ex- 
plained. They had taken me for a "hamsterer ' ' with a knap- 
sack full of the food their region could so ill spare. Not 
that any of them, probably, was suffering from hunger. 
But man is a selfish creature. He resents another's acquisi- 
tion of anything which may ever by any chance be of use 
to him. Particularly ''der Deutsche Bauer (the German 
peasant)," as a "hamsterer" with whom I fell in later put it, 
"is never an idealist. He believes in looking out for him- 
self first and foremost" — which characteristic, by the way, 
is not confined to his class in Germany, nor indeed to any 
land. "War, patriotism, Fatherland have no place in his 
heart when they clash with the interests of his purse," my 
informant went on. "Hence he has taken full advantage 
of the misery of others, using the keen competition to boost 
his prices far beyond all reason." 

Many a labor- weary workman of the cities, with a half- 
dozen mouths to fill, many a tired, emaciated woman, tramps 
the byways of Germany all Sunday long, halting at a 
score or two of farm-houses, dragging aching legs homeward 
late at night, with only three or four eggs, a few potatoes, 
and now and then a half-pound of butter to show for the 
exertion. Sometimes other food-seekers have completely 
annihilated the peasant's stock. Sometimes he has only 
enough for his own needs. Often his prices are so high that 
the "hamsterer" cannot reach them — the Bauer knows by 
years of experience now that if he bides his time some one 
to whom price is a minor detail will appear, perhaps the 
agents of the rich man's hotels and restaurants of Berlin 
and the larger cities. Frequently he is of a miserly dis- 
position, and hoards his produce against an imagined day 
of complete famine, or in the hope that the unreasonable 
prices will become even more unreasonable. There are 
laws against "hamstering," as there are against selling 

292 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

foodstuffs at more than the estabHshed price. Now and 
again the weary urban dweller who has tramped the country- 
side all day sees himself held up by a gendarme and despoiled 
of all his meager gleanings. But the peasant, for some reason, 
is seldom molested in his profiteering. 

The northern Bavarian complains that the people of 
Saxony outbid him among his own villages; the Saxon 
accuses the iron-fisted Prussian of descending upon his 
fields and carrying off the food so badly needed at home. 
For those with influence have little difficulty in reaching 
beyond the legal twenty-five kilometer limit. The result 
is that foodstuffs on which the government has set a maxi- 
mum price often never reach the market, but are gathered 
on the spot at prices several times higher than the law 
sanctions. 

"You see that farm over there?" asked a food-canvasser 
with whom I walked an hour or more one Sunday. "I 
stopped there and tried to buy butter. 'We haven't an 
ounce of butter to our names,' said the woman. 'Ah,' 
said I, just to see if I could not catch her in a lie, 'but I pay 
as high as twenty marks a pound.' 'In that case,' said the 
Unverschdmte, 'I can let you have any amount you want 
up to thirty pounds.' I could not really pay that price, 
of course, being a poor man, working hard for nine marks 
a day. But when I told her I would report her to the 
police she laughed in my face and slammed the door." 

It was easy to understand now why so many of those I 
had interviewed in my official capacity at Coblenz had 
expressed the opinion that sooner or later the poor of the 
cities would descend upon the peasants in bands and rob 
them of all their hoardings. The countrymen themselves 
showed that fear of this now and then gnawed at their 
souls, not so much by their speech as by their circumspect 
actions. The sight of these swarms of "hamsterers" 
descended from the north like locusts from the desert gave 

293 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

the prophecy new meaning. It would have been so easy 
for a few groups of them to join together and wreak 
the vengeance of their class on the "hard-hearted" peasants. 
Had they been of a less orderly, lifelong-disciplined race 
they might have thus run amuck months before. Instead, 
they plodded on through all the hardships circumstances 
had woven for them, with that all-suffering, uncomplaining 
sort of fatalism with which the war seems to have inoculated 
the German soul. 

Thus far the question of lodging had always been simple. 
I had only to pick out a village ahead on the map and put 
up at its chief Gasthaus. But Saturday night and the 
"hamsterers" gave the situation a new twist. With a 
leisurely twenty miles behind me I turned aside to the 
pleasing little hamlet of Miihlhausen, quite certain I had 
reached the end of that day's journey. But the Gastzimmer 
of the chief inn presented an astonishing afternoon sight. 
Its every table was densely surrounded by dust-streaked 
men, women, and older children, their rucksacks and straw 
coffers strewn about the floor. Instead of the serene, 
leisurely-diligent matron whom I expected to greet my 
entrance with a welcoming "Scoof I found a sharp-tongued, 
harassed female vainly striving to silence the constant 
refrain of, ''Hier! Glas Bier, bitte!" Far from having a mug 
set before me almost at the instant I took my seat, I was 
forced to remain standing, and it was several minutes before 
I could catch her attention long enough to request "das 
beste Zimmer." "Room!" she snapped, in a tone I had 
never dreamed a Bavarian landlady could muster; "over- 
filled hours ago ! " Incredible ! I had scarcely seen a fellow- 
guest for the night during all my tramp from Munich. 
Well, I would enjoy one of those good Gasthaus suppers 
and find lodging in another public-house at my leisure. 
Again I had reckoned without my hostess. When I suc- 
ceeded in once more catching the attention of the distracted 

294 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

matron, she flung at me over a shoulder: "Not a bite! 
'Hamsterers' have eaten every crumb in town." 

It was only too true. The other inn of Miihlhausen had 
been as thoroughly raided. Moreover, its beds also were 
already "overfilled." The seemingly impossible had come 
to pass — my chosen village not only would not shelter me 
for the night ; it would not even assuage my gnawing hunger 
before driving me forth into the wide, inhospitable world 
beyond. Truly war has its infernal details ! 

As always happens in such cases, the next town was at 
least twice as far away as the average distance between its 
neighbors. Fortunately an isolated little "beer-arbor" 
a few miles farther on had laid in a Saturday stock. The 
Wirt not only served me bread, but a generous cut of some 
mysterious species of sausage, without so much as batting 
an eyelid at my presumptuous request. Weary, dusty 
"hamsterers" of both sexes and all ages v/ere enjoying his 
Spartan hospitality also, their scanty fare contrasting sug- 
gestively with the great slabs of home-smoked cold ham, the 
hard-boiled eggs, Bauernbrod and butter with which a group 
of plump, taciturn peasant youths and girls gorged them- 
selves at another mug-decorated table with the surreptitious 
demeanor of yeggmen enjoying their ill-gotten winnings. 
The stragglers of the human weasel army punctuated the 
highway for a few kilometers farther. Some were war 
victims, stumping past on crippled legs; some were so 
gaunt-featured and thin that one wondered how they had 
succeeded in entering the race at all. The last one of the 
day was a woman past middle age, mountainous of form, 
her broad expanse of ruddy face streaked with dust and 
perspiration, who sat weightily on a roadside boulder, 
munching the remnants of a black-bread-and-smoked-pork 
lunch and gazing despairingly into the highway vista down 
which her more nimble-legged competitors had long since 
vanished. 

29s 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

In the end I was glad Miihlhausen had repulsed me, for I 
had a most delightful walk from sunset into dusk in forest- 
flanked solitude along the Ludwig Canal, with a swim in 
reflected moonshine to top it off. Darkness had completely 
fallen on the long summer day when I reached Neumarkt 
with thirty miles behind me. Under ordinary circumstances 
I should have had a large choice of lodgings; the place was 
important enough to call itself a city and its broad main 
street was lined by a continuous procession of peak-gabled 
Gasthduser. But it, too, was flooded with "hamsterers." 
They packed every beer-dispensing "guest-room"; they 
crowded every public lodging, awaiting the dawn of Sunday 
to charge forth in all directions upon the surrounding 
country-side. I made the circuit of its cobble-paved center 
four times, suffering a score of scornful rebuffs before I 
found a man who admitted vaguely that he might be able 
to shelter me for the night. 

He was another of those curious fairy-tale dwarfs one 
finds tucked away in the corners of Bavaria, and his eyrie 
befitted his personal appearance. It was a disjointed 
little den filled with the medieval paraphernalia — and in- 
cidentally with much of the unsavoriness — that had col- 
lected there during its several centuries of existence. One 
stooped to enter the beer-hall, and rubbed one's eyes for the 
astonishment of being suddenly carried back to the Middle 
Ages — as well as from the acrid clouds of smoke that sud- 
denly assailed them ; one all but crawled on hands and knees 
to reach the stoop-shouldered, dark cubbyholes miscalled 
sleeping-chambers above. Indeed, the establishment did 
not presume to pose as a Gasthaus; it contented itself with 
the more modest title of Gastwirtschaft. 

But there were more than mere physical difficulties in 
gaining admittance to the so-called lodgings under the 
eaves. The dwarfish Wirt had first to be satisfied that I 
was a paying guest. When I asked to be shown at once 

296 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

to my quarters, he gasped, protestingly, ^'Aber trinken Sie 
kein Glas Bier!'' I would indeed, and with it I would eat 
a substantial supper, if he could furnish one. That he 
could, and did. How he had gathered so many of the food- 
stuffs which most Germans strive for in vain, including 
such delicacies as eggs, veal, and butter, is no business of 
mine. My chief interest just then was to welcome the heap- 
ing plates which his gnomish urchins brought me from the 
cavernous hole of a kitchen out of which peered now and then 
the witchlike face of his wife-cook. The same impish little 
brats pattered about in their bare feet among the guests, 
serving them beer as often as a mug was emptied and 
listening with grinning faces to the sometimes obscene 
anecdotes with which a few of them assailed the rafters. 
Most of the chents that evening were of the respectable 
class, being "hamstering" men and wives forced to put up 
with whatever circumstances required of them, but they 
were in striking contrast to the disreputable habitues of what 
was evidently Neimiarkt's least gentlemanly establishment. 
In all the wine-soaked uproar of the evening there was but 
a single reference to what one fancied would have been any 
German's chief interest in those particular days. A maudlin 
braggart made a casual, parenthetical boast of what he 
"would do to the cursed Allies if he ever caught them 
again." The habitual guests applauded drunkenly, the 
transient ones preserved the same enduring silence they had 
displayed all the evening, the braggart lurched on along 
some wholly irrelevant theme, and the misshapen host 
continued serving his beer and pocketing pewter coins and 
"shin-plasters" with a mumble and a grimace that said as 
plainly as words, "Veil, vhat do I care vhat happens to the 
country if I can still do a paying pusiness?" But then, he 
was of the race that has often been accused of having no 
patriotism for anything beyond its own purse, whatever 
country it inhabits. 

297 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

When we had paid rather reasonable bills for the forbidden 
fruits that had been set before us, the Wirt lighted what 
seemed to be a straw stuffed with grease and conducted 
me and three "hamstering" workmen from Nurnberg up 
a low, twisting passageway to a garret crowded with four 
nests on legs which he dignified with the name of beds. 
I will spare the tender-hearted reader any detailed descrip- 
tion of our chamber, beyond remarking that we paid eighty 
pfennigs each for our accommodations, and were vastly 
overcharged at that. It was the only "hardship" of my 
German journey. My companions compared notes for 
a half -hour or more, on the misfortunes and possibilities of 
their war-time avocation, each taking care not to give the 
others any inkling of what corner of the landscape he hoped 
most successfully to "hamster" on the morrow, and by mid- 
night the overpopulated rendezvous of Neumarkt had 
sunk into its brief "pre-hamstering" slumber. 

Being ahead of my schedule, and moreover the day being 
Sunday, I did not loaf away until nine next morning. The 
main highway had swung westward toward Nurnberg. 
The more modest country road I followed due north led 
over a gently rolling region through many clumps of forest. 
Scattered groups of peasants returning from church passed 
me in almost continual procession during the noon hour. 
The older women stalked uncomfortably along in tight- 
fitting black gowns that resembled the styles to be seen in 
paintings of a century ago, holding their outer skirts knee- 
high and showing curiously decorated petticoats. On their 
heads they wore closely fitting kerchiefs of silky appearance, 
jet black in color, though on week-days they were coiffed 
with white cotton. Some ostentated light-colored aprons 
and pale-blue embroidered cloths knotted at the back of the 
neck and held in place by a breastpin in the form of a crucifix 
or other religious design. In one hand they gripped a 
prayer-book and in the other an amber or black rosary. 

298 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

The boys and girls, almost without exception, carried their 
heavy hob-nailed shoes in their hands and slapped along 
joyfully in their bare feet. In every village was an open- 
air bowling-alley, sometimes half hidden behind a crude 
lattice-work and always closely connected with the beer- 
dispensary, in which the younger men joined in their weekly 
sport as soon as church was over. Somewhere within sight 
of them hovered the grown girls, big blond German Mddchen 
with their often pretty faces and their plowman's arms, 
hands, ankles, and feet, dressed in their gay, light-colored 
Sunday best. 

Huge Hlac-bushes in fullest bloom sweetened the constant 
breeze with their perfume. The glassy surface of the canal 
still glistened in the near distance to the left; a cool, clear 
stream meandered in and out along the slight valley to the 
right. Countrymen trundled past on bicycles that still 
boasted good rubber tires, in contrast with the jolting 
substitutes to which most city riders had been reduced. 
A few of the returning "hamsterers" were similarly mounted, 
though the majority trudged mournfully on foot, carrying 
bags and knapsacks half filled with vegetables, chiefly 
potatoes, with live geese, ducks, or chickens. One youth 
pedaled past with a lamb gazing out of the rucksack on 
his back with the wondering eyes of a country boy taking 
his first journey. When I overtook him on the next long 
rise the rider displayed his woolly treasure proudly, at the 
same time complaining that he had been forced to pay 
"a whole seven marks" for it. As I turned aside for a dip 
in the inviting stream, the Munich-Berlin airplane express 
bourdonned by overhead, perhaps a thousand meters above, 
setting a bee-line through the glorious summer sky and 
contrasting strangely with the medieval life underfoot 
about me. 

At Gnadenberg, beside the artistic ruins of a once famous 
cloister with a hillside forest vista, an inn supplied me a 

299 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

generous dinner, with luscious young roast pork as the chief 
ingredient. The traveler in Germany during the armistice 
was far more impressed by such a repast than by mere 
ruins of the Middle Ages. The innkeeper and his wife had 
little in common with their competitors of the region. 
They were a youthful couple from Hamburg, who had 
adopted this almost unprecedented means of assuring 
themselves the livelihood which the war had denied them at 
home. Amid the distressing Bavarian dialect with which 
my ears had been assailed since my arrival in Munich their 
grammatical German speech was like a flash of light in a 
dark comer. 

By four I had already attained the parlor suite of the 
principal Gasthaus of Altdorf , my three huge windows look- 
ing out upon the broad main street of a truly picturesque 
town. Ancient peaked gables cut the horizon with their 
saw edge on every hand. The entire fagade of the aged 
church that boomed the quarter-hours across the way was 
shaded by a mighty tree that looked like a giant green 
haystack. A dozen other clocks, in towers or scattered 
about the inn, loudly questioned the veracity of the church- 
bells and of one another at as frequent intervals. Time 
may be of less importance to the Bavarian than to some 
less tranquil people, but he believes in marking it thoroughly. 
His every room boasts a clock or two, his villages resemble 
a horlogerie in the throes of anarchy, with every timepiece 
loudly expounding its own personal opinion, until the entire 
twenty -four hours becomes a constant uproar of conflicting 
theories, like the hubbub of some Bolshevik assembly. Most 
of them are not contented with single statements, but insist 
on repeating their quarter-hourly misinformation. The 
preoccupied guest or the uneasy sleeper refrains with diffi- 
culty from shouting at some insistent timepiece or church- 
bell : ' ' Yes, you said that a moment ago. For Heaven's sake, 
don't be so redundant!" But his protest would be sure to 

300 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

be drowned out by the clangor of some other clock vocifer- 
ously correcting the statements of its competitors. It is 
always a quarter to, or after, something or other according 
to the clocks of Bavaria. The wise man scorns them all 
and takes his time from the sun or his appetite. 

Over my beer I fell into conversation with an old merchant 
from Nurnberg and his sister-in-law. The pair were the 
most nearly resentful toward America of any persons I 
met in Germany, yet not so much so but that we passed 
a most agreeable evening together. The man clung dog- 
gedly to a theory that seemed to be moribund in Germany 
that America's only real reason for entering the war was 
to protect her investments in the Allied cause. The woman 
had been a hack writer on sundry subjects for a half-cen- 
tury, and a frequent contributor to German-language papers 
in America. As is frequently the case with her sex, she was 
far more bitter and decidedly less open-minded toward 
her country's enemies than the men. Her chief complaint, 
however, was that America's entrance into the war had cut 
her off from her most lucrative field, and her principal 
anxiety the question as to how soon she would again be 
able to exchange manuscripts for American drafts. She 
grew almost vociferous in demanding, not of me, but of her 
companion, why American writers were permitted to roam 
at large in Germany while the two countries were still at 
war, particularly why the Allies did not allow the same 
privileges to German writers. I was as much in the dark 
on that subject as she. Her companion, however, assured 
her that it was because Germany had always been more 
frank and open-minded than her enemies; that the more 
freedom allowed enemy correspondents the sooner would 
the world come to realize that Germany's cause had been 
the more just. She admitted all this, adding that nowhere 
were justice and enlightenment so fully developed as in her 
beloved Fatherland, but she rather spoiled the assertion 

301 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

by her constant amazement that I dared go about the coun- 
try unarmed. In all the torrent of words she poured forth 
one outburst still stands out in my memory: 

"Fortunately," she cried, "Roosevelt is dead. He would 
have made it even harder for poor Germany than Wilson 
has. Why should that man have joined our enemies, too, 
after we had treated him like a king ? His daughter accepted 
a nice wedding-present from our Kaiser, and then he turned 
against us!" 

One sensed the curious working of the typical German 
mind in that remark. The Kaiser had given a friendly 
gift, he had received a man with honor, hence anything the 
Kaiser chose to do thereafter should have met with that 
man's unqualified approval. It was a most natural con- 
clusion, from the German point of view. Did not the 
Kaiser and his clan rise to the height from which they fell 
partly by the judicious distribution of "honors" to those 
who might otherwise have successfully opposed them, 
by the lavishing of badges and medals, of honorariums and 
preferences, of iron crosses and costly baubles? 

A young man at an adjacent table took exception to some 
accusation against America by the cantankerous old mer- 
chant, and joined in the conversation. From that moment 
forth I was not once called upon to defend my country's 
actions; our new companion did so far more effectively 
than I could possibly have done. He was professor of 
philosophy in the ancient University of Altdorf, and his 
power of viewing a question from both sides, with absolute 
impartiality, without the faintest glow of personal feeling, 
attained the realms of the supernatural. During the entire 
war he had been an officer at the front, having returned to 
his academic duties within a month after the signing of the 
armistice. As women are frequently more rabid than men 
in their hatred of a warring enemy, so are the men who have 
taken the least active part in the conflict commonly the 

302 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

more furious. One can often recognize almost at a glance • 
the real soldier — not the parader in uniform at the rear, 
but him who has seen actual warfare; he is wiser and less 
fanatical, he is more apt to realize that his enemy, too, 
had something to fight for, that every war in history has 
had some right on both sides. 

When we exchanged names I found that the professor 
was more familiar than I with a tale I once wrote of a journey 
around the world, republished in his own tongue. The 
discovery led us into discussions that lasted late into the 
evening. In the morning he conducted me through the 
venerable seat of learning to which he was attached. It 
had suffered much from the war, not merely financially, 
but in the loss of fully two-thirds of its faculty and students. 
Three-fourths of them had returned now, but they had 
not brought with them the pre-war atmosphere. He 
detected an impatience with academic pursuits, a super- 
ficiality that had never before been known in German 
universities. Particularly the youths who had served as 
officers during the war submitted themselves with great 
difficulty to the discipline of the class-room. The chief 
"sight" of the institution was an underground cell in which 
the afterward famous Wallenstein was once confined. In 
his youth the general attended the university for a year, 
the last one of the sixteenth century. His studies, however, 
had been almost entirely confined to the attractions of the 
Gasthduser and the charms of the fair maidens of the sur- 
rounding villages. The attempt one day to enliven academic 
proceedings with an alcoholic exhilaration, of which he was 
not even the legal possessor financially, brought him to the 
sobering depths of the iron-barred cellar and eventually to 
expulsion. But alas for diligence and sobriety! While the 
self-denying grinds of his day have sunk centuries deep into 
oblivion, the name of Wallenstein is emblazoned in letters a 
meter high across the facade of the steep-gabled dwelling 

303 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

in which he recuperated during the useless daylight hours 
from his nightly lucubrations. 

The professor pointed out to me a byway leading due 
northward over the green hills. Now it strode joyfully 
across broad meadows and ripening wheat-fields about 
which scampered wild rabbits as I advanced ; now it climbed 
deliberately up into the cathedral depths of evergreen forests 
that stretched away for hours in any direction. Bucolic 
little hamlets welcomed me as often as thirst suggested the 
attractiveness of dropping the rucksack from my shoulders 
to the bench of a refreshing country inn. I had struck a 
Protestant streak, wedged in between two broad Catholic 
regions. It may have been but a trick of the imagination, 
but the local dialect seemed to have grown more German 
with the change. Certainly the beer was different, pale 
yellow in contrast with the mahogany brown of the far 
heavier brew to the south. Whether or not it was due to 
mere chance or to a difference in taste, the two types of the 
beverage seemed to go with their respective form of Chris- 
tianity through all Bavaria. But, alas! none of it was the 
beer of yesteryear. On the walls of one tiny Gastzimmer 
hung large framed portraits, dauby in composition, of four 
youthful soldiers. The shuffling old woman who served me 
caught my questioning glance at the largest of them. 

"My youngest," she explained, in her toothless mumble. 
"He has been missing since October, 1914. Never a word. 
He, over there, was slaughtered at Verdun. My oldest, he 
with the cap of an Unteroffizier, is a prisoner in France. 
They will never let him come back, it is said. The other, 
in the smallest picture, is working in the fields out yonder, 
but he has a stiff arm and he cannot do much. Pictures 
cost so now, too; we had to get a smaller one each year. 
My man was in it also. He still suffers from the malady 
of the trenches. He spends more than half his days in bed. 
War is schrecklich — ^frightful," she concluded, but she said it in 

304 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

the dull, dispassionate tone in which she might have deplored 
the lack of rain or the loss of a part of her herd. Indeed, 
there seemed to be more feeling in her voice as she added: 
"And they took all our horses. We have only an ox left 
now, and the cows." 

Descending into a valley beyond, I met a score of school- 
boys, of about fifteen, each with a knapsack on his back, 
climbing slowly upward into the forest. They crowded 
closely around a middle-aged man, similarly burdened, 
who was talking as he walked and to whom the boys gave 
such fixed attention that they did not so much as glance 
at me. His topic, as I caught from the few words I heard, 
was Roman history, on which he was discoursing as deliber- 
ately as if the group had been seated in their stuffy class- 
room in the village below. Yet it was mid-morning of a 
Monday. This German custom of excursion-lessons might 
be adopted to advantage in our own land; were it not that 
our fondness for co-education would tend to distract scholarly 
attention. 

Toward noon the byways descended from the hills, 
became a highway, and turned eastward along a broad 
river valley. Hersbruck, at the turning-point, was sur- 
rounded on two sides by railways, with all their attendant 
grime and clatter, but the town itself was as peak-gabled 
and cobble-paved, as Middle-Aged in appearance, as if 
modem science had never invaded it. The population left 
over after the all-important brewing and serving of beer 
had been accomplished seemed to busy itself with supply- 
ing the peasants of the neighboring regions. I declined the 
valley road and climbed again into the hills to the north. 
Their first flanks, on the edge of the town, were strewn with 
impressive villas, obviously new and strikingly out of keep- 
ing with the modest old town below. They reminded one 
of the flashy, rouge-lacquered daughters of our simple 
immigrants. A youth in blouse and field-gray trousers, 

30s 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

who was setting me on my way, smiled faintly and quiz- 
zically when I called attention to them. 

"Rich men?" I queried. 

"Yes, indeed," he answered, with something curiously 
like a growl in his voice. 

"What do they do?" I went on, chiefly to make con- 
versation. 

"Nothing," he replied, in a tone that suggested the 
subject was distasteful. 

"Then how did they get rich?" I persisted. 

"Wise men," he mumbled, with a meaning side glance. 

"All built since the war?" I hazarded, after a moment) 
gazing again along the snowy hillside. 

He nodded silently, with something faintly like a wink, 
at the same time glancing cautiously upward, as if he feared 
the ostentatious villas would vent their influential wrath 
upon him for giving their questionable pedigree to a stranger. 

Farther on, along a soft-footed country road that undu- 
lated over a landscape blooming with fruit-trees and immense 
lilac-bushes, I came upon a youthful shepherd hobbling 
after his grazing sheep on a crude wooden leg that seemed 
to have been fashioned with an ax from the trunk of a 
sapling. I attempted to rouse him to a recital of his war 
experiences, but he scowled at my first hint and preserved 
a moody silence. A much older man, tending his fat cattle 
a mile beyond, was, on the contrary, eager to "fight the war 
over again." It suggested to him none of the bitter memo- 
ries that assailed the one-legged shepherd. He had been 
too old to serve, and his two sons, cultivating a field across 
the way, had returned in full health. He expressed a mild 
thankfulness that it was over, however, because of the 
restrictions it had imposed upon the peasants. For every 
cow he possessed he was obliged to deliver two liters of 
milk a day. An official milk-gatherer from the town passed 
each morning. Any cow that habitually fell below the 

306 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

standard set must be reported ready for slaughter. Un- 
productive hens suffered the same fate. He owned ten 
Stuck of them, a hundred and fifty in all, with four roosters 
to keep them company, and was forced to contribute four 
hundred and fifty eggs a week to the town larder. At good 
prices? Oh yes, the prices were not bad — three times those 
of before the war, but by no means what the "hamsterers" 
would gladly pay. Of course, he smiled contentedly, there 
were still milk and eggs left over for his own use. The coun- 
try people did not suffer from hunger. They could not 
afford to, with their constant hard labor. It was different 
with the city folks, who put in short hours and sat down 
much of the time. He had heard that all the war restric- 
tions would be over in August. He certainly hoped so, for 
life was growing very tiresome with all these regulations. 

Every one of his half-hundred cows wore about its neck 
a broad board, decorated in colors with fantastic figures, 
from which hung a large bell. Each of the latter was dis- 
tinct in timbre and all of fine tone. The chimes produced 
by the grazing herd was a real music that the breeze wafted 
to my ears until I had passed the crest of the next hillock. 
How so much metal suitable for cannon-making had escaped 
the Kaiser's brass-gatherers was a mystery which the extraor- 
dinary influence of the peasant class only partly explained. 

Beyond the medieval ruin of Hohenstein, which had served 
me for half the afternoon as a lighthouse does the mariner, 
the narrow road led gradually downward and brought me 
once more toward sunset, to the river valley. The railway 
followed the stream closely, piercing the many towering 
crags with its tunnels. But the broad highroad wound in 
great curves that almost doubled the distance, avoiding 
every slightest ridge, as if the road-builders of centuries ago 
had been bent on making the journey through this charming 
region as long as possible. 

Velden, claiming the title of "city," was as unprogressive 
21 307 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

and as nearly unclean as any town I ever saw in Bavaria. 
A half-dozen inns flashed signs of welcome in the stranger's 
face, yet declined to furnish the hospitality they seemed to 
offer. I canvassed them all, only to be as many times turned 
away by females almost as slatternly in appearance and as 
resentful of would-be guests as the Indians of the Andes. 
One might have fancied the hookworm had invaded the 
town, so un-Bavarian was the ambitionless manner of its 
inhabitants and the disheveled aspect of its clientless public- 
houses. Only one of the latter consented even to lodge me, 
and that with a bad grace that was colder than indifference. 
None of them would so much as listen when I broached the 
question of food. 

The shopkeepers treated me with equal scorn. One after 
another they asserted that they had not a scrap of Lebens- 
mittel of any species to sell. Three times, however, they 
directed me to the Gasthaus that had been most decided in 
proclaiming its inability to supply my wants, assuring me 
that the proprietor was a farmer and stock-breeder who had 
"more than enough of everything, if the truth were known." 
But a second visit to the alleged food-hoarder merely aroused 
the assertion that his fellow-townsmen were prevaricators 
striving to cover up their own faults by slandering a poor, 
hard-working neighbor. 

Apparently Velden had developed a case of nerves on the 
food question. This was natural from its size and situa- 
tion — it was large enough to feel something of the pinch 
that the blockade had brought to every German city, yet 
nearly enough peasant-like in character to make hoarding 
possible. I did not propose, however, to let an excusable 
selfishness deprive me of my evening meal. When it became 
certain that voluntary accommodations were not to be had, 
I took a leaf from my South American note-book and appealed 
my case to the local authorities. 

The Biirgermeister was a miller on the river-bank at the 

308 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

edge of town. He received me as coldly as I had expected, 
and continued to discuss with an aged assistant the action 
to be taken on certain documents which my arrival had 
found them studying. I did not press matters, well know- 
ing that I could gain full attention when I chose and be- 
ing interested in examining the town headquarters. It 
was a high, time-smudged room of the old stone mill, with 
great beams across its ceiling and crude pigeonholes stuffed 
with musty, age-yellowed official papers along its walls. 
Now and again a local citizen knocked timidly at the door 
and entered, hat in hand, to make some request of the 
town's chief authority, his apologetic air an amusing con- 
trast to the commanding tone with which the Burger- 
meister's wife bade him, from the opposite entrance, come 
to supper. 

He was on the point of obeying this summons when I 
drew forth my impressive papers and stated my case. 
The mayor and his assistant quickly lost their supercilious 
attitude. The former even gave my demands precedence 
over those of his wife. He slapped a hat on his head and, 
leaving two or three fellow-citizens standing uncovered 
where the new turn of events had foiuid them, set out with 
me for the center of town. There he confirmed the asser- 
tions of the "prevaricators" by marching unhesitatingly 
into the same Gasthaus, to "The Black Bear" that had twice 
turned me away. Bidding me take seat at a table, he dis- 
appeared into the kitchen. Several moments later he re- 
turned, smiling encouragingly, and sat down opposite me 
with the information that "everything had been arranged." 
Behind him came the landlady who had so forcibly denied 
the existence of food on her premises a half -hour before, 
smirking hospitality now and bearing in either hand a mug 
of beer. Before we had emptied these she set before me a 
heaping plateful of steaming potatoes, boiled in their jackets, 
enough cold ham to have satisfied even a tramp's appetite 

309 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

several times over, and a loaf of good peasant's bread of the 
size and shape of a grindstone. 

The Burgermeister remained with me to the end of his 
second mug of beer, declining to eat for reason of the supper 
that was awaiting him at home, but answering my questions 
with the over-courteous deliberation that befitted the oiBcial 
part I was playing. When he left, the Wirt seemed to feel 
it his duty to give as constant attention as possible to so 
important a guest. He sat down in the vacated chair 
opposite and, except when his beer-serving duties required 
him to absent himself momentarily , remained there all the 
evening. He was of the heavy, stolid type of most of his 
class, a peasant by day and the chief assistant of his inn- 
keeping spouse during the evening. For fully a half -hour 
he stared at me unbrokenly, watching my every slightest 
movement as an inventor might the actions of his latest 
contraption. A group of his fellow- townsmen, sipping their 
beer at another table, kept similar vigil, never once taking 
their eyes off me, uttering not a sound, sitting as motionless 
as the old stone statues they somehow resembled, except 
now and then to raise their mugs to their lips and set them 
noiselessly down again. The rather slatternly spouse and 
her brood of unkempt urchins surrounded still another table, 
eying me as fixedly as the rest. I attempted several times 
to break the ice, with no other success than to evoke a 
guttural monosyllable from the staring landlord. The entire 
assembly seemed to be dumm beyond recovery, to be stupid- 
ity personified. Unable to force oneself upon them, one could 
only sit and wonder what was taking place inside their thick 
skulls. Their vacant faces gave not an inkling of thought. 
Whenever I exploded a question in the oppressive silence 
the Wirt answered it like a school-boy reciting some reply 
learned by heart from his books. The stone-headed group 
listened motionless until long after his voice had died away, 
and drifted back into their silent, automatic beer-drinking. 

310 




ENTRANCE TO THE HOME OF WAGNER IN BAYREUTH 




THE SANGERVEREIN, OR "GLEE CLUB, OF BAYREUTH, WITH WHOM I SPENT, 

A DAY 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

It was, of course, as much bashfulness as stupidity that 
held them dumb. Peasants the world over are more or less 
chary of expressing themselves before strangers, before 
"city people," particularly when their dialect differs con- 
siderably from the cultured form of their language. But 
what seemed queerest in such groups as these was their 
utter lack of curiosity, their apparently complete want of 
interest in anything beyond their own narrow sphere. 
They knew I was an American, they knew I had seen much 
of the other side of the struggle that had oppressed them 
for nearly five years and brought their once powerful Father- 
land close to annihilation. Yet they had not a question to 
ask. It was as if they had grown accustomed through 
generations of training to having their information delivered 
to them in packages bearing the seal of their overlords, and 
considered it neither advantageous nor seemly to tap any 
other sources they came upon in their life's journey. 

Very gradually, as the evening wore on, the landlord's 
replies to my queries reached the length of being informa- 
tive. Velden, he asserted, was a Protestant community; 
there was not a Catholic in town, nor a Jew. On the other 
hand, Neuhaus, a few miles beyond, paid universal homage 
to Rome. With a population of one hundred and seventy 
families, averaging four to five each now, or a total of eight 
hundred, Velden had lost thirty-seven men in the war, 
besides three times that many being seriously wounded, 
nearly half of them more or less crippled for life. Then 
there were some fifty prisoners in France, whom they never 
expected to return. The Allies would keep them to rebuild 
the cities the Germans had destroyed — and those the 
Allied artillery had ruined, too ; that was the especially unfair 
side of it. No, he had not been a soldier himself — ^he was 
barely forty and to all appearances as powerful as an ox — 
because he had been more useful at home. His family 
had not exactly suffered, though the schools had become 

311 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

almost a farce, with all the teachers at war. Women? 
Faugh! How can women teach boys? They grow up 
altogether too soft even under the strengest of masters. As 
to food; well, being mostly peasants, they probably had 
about a hundred pounds of fat or meat where two hundred 
or so were needed. But it was a constant struggle to keep 
the "hamsterers" from carrying off what the town required 
for its own use. 

That the struggle had been won was evident from the 
quantities of ham, beef, potatoes, and bread which his wife 
served her habitual clients in the course of the evening. 
She seemed to have food hidden away in every nook and 
cranny of the house, like a miser his gold, and acknowledged 
its existence with the canniness of the South American 
Indian. As she lighted me to a comfortable bedchamber 
above, as clean as the lower story was disorderly, she re- 
marked, apologetically : 

"If I had known in what purpose you were here I would 
not have sent you away when you first came. But another 
American food commissioner was in Velden just two days 
ago, a major who has his headquarters in Niirnberg. He 
came with a German captain, and they went fishing on the 
river. ' ' 

In the morning she served me real coffee, with milk and 
white loaf sugar, two eggs, appealingly fresh, bread and 
butter, and an excellent cake — and her bill for everything, 
including the lodging, was six marks. In Berlin or Munich 
the food alone, had it been attainable, would have cost 
thirty to forty marks. Plainly it was advantageous to 
Velden to pose as suffering from food scarcity. 

The same species of selfishness was in evidence in the 

region round about. Not one of the several villages tucked 

away in the great evergreen forests of the "Frankische 

Schweitz" through which my route wound that day would 

exchange foodstuffs of any species for mere money. When 

312 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

noon lay so far behind me that I was tempted to use physical 
force to satisfy my appetite, I entered the crude Gasthaus 
of a little woodcutters' hamlet.' A family of nearly a dozen 
sat at a table occupying half the room, wolfing a dinner 
that gave little evidence of war-time scarcity. Here, too, 
there was an abundance of meat, potatoes, bread, and 
several other appetizing things. But strangers were wel- 
come only to beer. Could one live on that, there would 
never be any excuse for going hungry in Bavaria. When I 
asked for food also the coarse-featured, bedraggled female 
who had filled my mug snarled like a dog over a bone and 
sat down with her family again, heaping her plate high 
with a steaming stew. I persisted, and she rose at last 
with a growl and served me a bowl of some kind of oatmeal 
gruel, liquid with milk. For this she demanded ten pfen- 
nigs, or nearly three-fourths of a cent. But if it was cheap, 
nothing could induce her to sell more of it. My loudest 
appeals for a second helping, for anything else, even for a 
slice of the immense loaf of bread from which each member 
of the gorging family slashed himself a generous portion at 
frequent intervals, were treated with the scornful silence 
with which the police sergeant might ignore the shouts 
of a drunken prisoner. 

Birds sang a bit dolefully in the immense forest that 
stretched for miles beyond. Peasants were scraping up the 
mosslike growth that covered the ground and piling it in 
heaps near the road, whence it was hauled away in wagons 
so low on their wheels that they suggested dachshunds. 
The stuff served as bedding for cattle, sometimes for fer- 
tilizer, and now and then, during the past year or two, as 
fodder. The tops of all trees felled were carried away and 
made use of in the same manner. A dozen times a day, 
through all this region of Bavaria, I passed women, singly 
or in groups, in the villages, laboriously chopping up the 
tops and branches of evergreens on broad wooden blocks, 

313 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

with a tool resembling a heavy meat-cleaver. Hundreds 
of the larger trees had been tapped for their pitch, used 
in the making of turpentine, the trunks being scarred with 
a dozen large V-shaped gashes joined together by a single 
line ending at a receptacle of the form of a sea-sheU. Horses 
were almost never seen along the roads, and seldom in the 
fields. The draught animals were oxen, or, still more often, 
cows, gaunt and languid from their double contribution 
to man's requirements. At the rare blacksmith shops the 
combined force of two or three workmen was more likely 
to be found shoeing a cow than anything else. Of all the 
signs of the paternal care the Kaiser's government took 
of its people, none, perhaps, was more amusing than the 
Hemmstelle along the way. At the top of every grade stood 
a post with a cast-iron rectangle bearing that word — Ger- 
man for "braking-place" — and, for the benefit of the 
illiterate, an image of the old-fashioned wagon-brake — a 
species of iron shoe to be placed under the hind wheel — 
that is still widely used in the region. Evidently the 
fatherly government could not even trust its simple sub- 
jects to recognize a hill when they saw one. 

Pegnitz, though not much larger, was a much more pro- 
gressive town than Velden. Its principal Gasthaus was 
just enough unlike a city hotel to retain all the charm of a 
country inn, while boasting such improvements as table- 
cloths and electric buttons that actually brought a servant 
to the same room as that occupied by the guest who pressed 
them. Yet it retained an innlike modesty of price. My 
full day's accommodation there cost no more than had my 
night in Velden — or would not have had I had the courage 
to refuse the mugs of beer that were instantly forthcoming 
as often as I sat down at the guest-room table. To be sure, 
no meat was served, being replaced by fish. The day was 
Tuesday and for some reason Pegnitz obeyed the law com- 
manding all Germany to go meatless twice a week. Ap- 

314 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

parently it was alone among the Bavarian towns in observing 
this regulation. I remember no other day without meat 
in all my tramp northward from Munich, even though 
Friday always caught me in a Catholic section. Usually I 
had meat twice a day, often three times, and, on one glorious 
occasion, four. 

An afternoon downpour held me for a day in Pegnitz. 
I improved the time by visiting most of the merchants in 
town, in my pseudo-official capacity. Of the three grocers, 
two were completely out of foodstuffs, the other fairly well 
supplied. They took turns in stocking up with everything 
available, so that each became the town grocer every third 
month and contented himself with dispensing a few non- 
edible articles during the intervening sixty days. The 
baker, who looked so much like a heavy-weight pugilist 
that even the huge grindstone loaves seemed delicate 
in his massive hands, was stoking his oven with rubbish 
from the surrounding forest, mixed with charcoal, when I 
found him. Fuel, he complained, had become such a problem 
that it would have kept him awake nights, if a baker ever 
had any time to sleep. Before the war the rest of the town 
burned coal ; now he had to compete with every one for his 
wood and charcoal. His oven was an immense affair of 
stone and brick, quite like the outdoor bake-huts one finds 
through all Bavaria, but set down into the cellar at the 
back of his shop and reaching to the roof. He opened a 
sack of flour and spread some of it out before me. It looked 
like a very coarse bran. Yet it was twice as expensive 
as the fine white flour of pre-war days, he growled. Bread 
prices in Pegnitz had a bit more than doubled. He had 
no more say in setting the price than any other citizen ; the 
Municipal Council had assumed that responsibility. Women, 
children, and men in poor health suffered from the stufl. 
Some had ruined their stomachs entirely with it. Yet 
Pegnitz bread had never been made of anything but wheat. 

315 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

In Munich the bakers used potato flour and worse; he had 
seen some of the rascals put in sawdust. He had heard that 
America was sending white flour to Germany, but certainly 
none of it had ever reached Pegnitz. 

The village milk-dealer was more incensed on this subject 
of bread than on the scarcity of his own stock. Or perhaps 
a milder verb would more exactly picture his attitude; he 
was too anemic and lifeless to be incensed at anything. 
His cadaverous form gave him the appearance of an under- 
nourished child, compared to the brawny baker, and anger 
was too strong an emotion for his weakened state. Mis- 
fortune merely left him sad and increased the hopeless 
look in his watery eyes, deep sunken in their wide frame 
of blue flesh-rings. He had spent two years in the trenches 
and returned home so far gone in health that he could not 
even endure the war-bread his wife and five small children 
had grown so thin on during his absence. Before the war 
he could carry a canful of milk the entire length of the shop 
without the least difficulty. Now if he merely attempted 
to lift one his head swam for an hour afterward. People 
were not exactly starved to death, he said, but they were so 
run down that if they caught anything, even the minor ills 
no one had paid any attention to before the war, they were 
more apt to die than to get well. Pegnitz had lost more 
of its inhabitants at home in that way than had been killed 
in the war. 

One hundred and forty liters of milk was the daily supply 
for a population of three thousand now. The town had 
consumed about five hundred before the war. Children 
under two were entitled to a liter a day, but only those 
whose parents were first to arrive when the daily supply 
came in got that amount. My visit was well timed, for 
customers were already forming a line at the door, each 
carrying a small pail or pitcher and clutching in one hand 
his precious yellow milk-sheet. It was five in the afternoon. 

316 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

The town milk-gatherer drew up before the door in an 
ancient "Dachshund" wagon drawn by two emaciated 
horses, and carried his four cans inside. The dispenser 
introduced me to him and turned to help his wife dole out 
the precious liquid. They knew, of course, the family con- 
ditions of every customer and, in consequence, the amount 
to which each was entitled, and clipped the corresponding 
coupons from the yellow sheets without so much as glancing 
at them. Some received as little as a small cupful; the 
majority took a half -liter. In ten minutes the four cans 
stood empty and the shopkeeper slouched out to join us 
again. 

"You see that woman?" he asked, pointing after the 
retreating figure of his last customer. "She looks about 
sixty, nicht wahrf She is really thirty-six. Her husband 
was killed at Verdun. She has four small children and is en- 
titled to two full liters. But she can only afford to buy a half- 
liter a day — milk has doubled in price in the past four years ; 
thirty-two pfennigs a liter now — so she always comes near 
the end when there is not two liters left, because she is 
ashamed to say she cannot buy her full allowance. We 
always save a half-liter for her, and if some one else comes 
first we tell them the cans are ausgepumpt. There are many 
like her in Pegnitz — unable to pay for as much as their 
tickets allow them. That is lucky, too, for there would 
not be half enough to go round. If I were not in the milk 
business myself I don't know what I should do, either, 
with our five children. About all the profit we get out 
of the business now is our own three liters." 

The milk-gatherer was of a jolly temperament. His smile 
disclosed every few seconds the two lonely yellow fangs that 
decorated his upper jaw. Perhaps no other one thing so 
strikingly illustrates the deterioration which the war has 
brought the German physique as the condition of the teeth. 
In my former visits to the Empire I had constantly admired 

317 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

the splendid, strong white teeth of all classes. To-day 
it is almost rare to find an adult with a full set. The ma- 
jority are as unsightly in this respect as the lower classes 
of England. When the prisoners who poured in upon us 
during the last drives of the war first called attention to 
this change for the worse, I set it down as the result of life 
in the trenches. Back of the lines, however, Ersatz food 
and under-nourishment seem to have had as deleterious 
an effect. 

Milk, said the man who had brought Pegnitz its supply 
for years, was by no means as rich as it used to be. Fodder 
was scarce, and every one used his milch cow as oxen now, 
far more than formerly. He set out at four every morning 
of his life, covered twenty miles, or more than twice what 
he had before the war, and sometimes could not fill his 
four cans at that. Up to a few months before he had had 
an assistant — an English prisoner. He never tired of sing- 
ing the praises of "my Englishman," as he called him. 
He worked some reference to him into every sentence, each 
time displaying his fangs in his pleasure at the recollection. 
'■'My Englishman" had come to him in 191 5. He was a 
bank clerk at home and knew no more of farming than a 
child. But he had learned quickly, and to speak German 
as well — a sad German it must have been indeed if he 
had copied from the dialect of the region. For months at a 
time "my Englishman" had driven the milk route alone, 
while he remained at home to work in the fields. Run 
away! Nonsense! He had told people he had never 
enjoyed himself half so much in London, He had promised 
to come back after peace. He stayed until two months 
after the armistice. His last words were that he knew he 
could never endure it to sit all day on a stool, in a stuffy 
office, after roaming the hills of Bavaria nearly four years. 
On Sundays he went miles away to visit other Englishmen. 
French prisoners went where they liked, too; no one ever 

318 




WOMEN AND OXEN — OR COWS — WERE MORE NUMEROUS THAN MEN AND 
HORSES IN THE FIELDS 




THE BAVARIAN PEASANT DOES HIS BAKING IN AN OUTDOOR OVEN 



"FOOD WEASELS" 

bothered them. They had all left in January, in a special 
train. Yes, most of them had been good workmen, "my 
Englishman " especially. They had labored with the women 
in the fields when the men were away, and helped them about 
the house. They had always been friendly, sometimes too 
friendly. Did I see that little boy across the street, there 
in front of the widow's cloth-shop? Every one knew he 
was English. But what could you expect, with husbands 
away sometimes for years at a time? 

Pegnitz boasted a large iron-foundry and a considerable 
population of factory hands. Rumor had it that this class 
held more enmity toward citizens of the Allied powers 
than the rural population, that it would even be dangerous 
for me to mix with them. I took pains, therefore, to stroll 
toward the foundry gate as the workmen were leaving, at 
six. They toiled eight hours a day, like all their class 
throughout Germany now, but took advantage of the change 
to sleep late, "like the capitalists," beginning their labors 
at eight and taking two hours off at noon. I picked out an 
intelligent-looking workman and fell into conversation 
with him, deliberately emphasizing the fact that I was an 
American. A considerable group of his fellows crowded 
around us, and several joined in the conversation. But 
though two or three scowled a bit when my nationality was 
whispered through the gathering, it was evidently merely 
a sign that they were puzzling to know how I had come 
so far afield so soon after the signing of the armistice. Far 
from showing any enmity, they evinced a most friendly 
curiosity, tinged only once or twice with a mild and crude 
attempt at sarcasm which the others at once scowled down. 
Several wished to know how wages were in their line in 
America, particularly whether our workmen had forced 
"the capitalists" to grant the eight-hour day, and several 
inquired how soon I thought it would be possible to emigrate 
— ^how soon, that is, that enough ships would be released 

319 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

from military service to bring fares down within reach of a 
working-man's purse. Not one of them seemed to suspect 
that there might be other difficulties than financial ones. 
Then, of course, the majority deluged me with questions 
as to when America would actually begin to send fats and 
foodstuffs and raw materials for their factories and — and 
tobacco. There was little suggestion of under-nourishment 
in this gathering, though, to be sure, none of them seemed 
overfed. They looked hardy and fit; the faces under the 
red-banded, visorless caps that covered a majority of the 
heads showed few signs of ill health. It is not so much 
the factory hands themselves, with their out-of-work pen- 
sions even when labor is lacking, who suffer from the stag- 
nation of Germany's industries, as the hangers-on of the 
factory class — the busy-time helpers, the unprovided women 
and children, the small shopkeepers who depend on this 
class for their clientele. 



XV 



MUSIC STILL HAS CHARMS 



ABROAD highway offering several fine vistas brought 
me at noon to Bayreuth. The street that led me to 
the central square was called Wagnerstrasse and passed 
directly by the last home of the famous composer. As soon 
as a frock-tailed hotel force had ministered to my immediate 
necessities I strolled back to visit the place. Somewhere 
I had picked up the impression that it had been turned 
into a museum, like the former residences of Goethe and 
Schiller. Nearly a year before, I recalled the Paris papers 
had announced the death of Frau Wagner, and certainly the 
Germans would not allow the home of their great musician 
to fall into other hands. I turned in at the tall grilled gate, 
fastened only with a latch, and sauntered along the broad 
driveway, shaded by magnificent trees that half hid the 
wide house at the end of it. This was a two-story building 
in reddish-yellow brick, rectangular of fagade under its 
almost flat roof, the door gained by a balustraded stone 
veranda without covering and with steps at either end. 
A large bust, not of the composer, as I had fancied at a 
distance, but of his royal companion, Ludwig, stared down 
the driveway at my approach. As I paused to look at this 
the only person in sight glanced up at me with what seemed 
an air between anger and surprise. He was an aged gar- 
dener, shriveled in form and face, who was engaged in 
watering the masses of flowers of many species that sur- 

321 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

rounded the house on every side. Something m his manner, 
as he set down his watering-pot and shuffled toward me, 
plus the absence of any of the outward signs of a public 
place of pilgrimage, suggested that I was in the wrong pew. 

"Does some one live here?" I hazarded, lamely. 

"Certainly, the Wagner family," he replied, sharply, 
glaring at me under bushy eyebrows. 

"But — er — Frau Wagner being dead, I thought ..." 

"Frau Wagner is as alive as you or I," he retorted, staring 
as if he suspected me of being some harmless species of 
maniac. 

"Frau Cosima Wagner, wife of the composer?" I per- 
sisted, smiling at what seemed to be the forgetfulness of an 
old man; "why, my dear fellow, her death was in the papers 
a year ago . . ." 

"Frau Cosima Wagner, jawohl, mein Herr," he retorted. 
"As I cut flowers for her room every morning and see her 
every afternoon, I suppose I know as much about it as the 
papers. It was quite another Frau Wagner who died 
last year; and the fool newspapers seldom know what they 
are talking about, anyway. Then there is . . ." 

His voice had dropped to a whisper and I followed the 
gaze he had turned into the house. Over the veranda 
balustrade a bareheaded man stared down at us like one who 
had been disturbed from mental labors, or an afternoon nap, 
by our chatter. He was short and slight, yet rather strongly 
built, too, with iron-gray hair and a smooth-shaven face. 
A photograph I had seen somewhere suddenly rose to the 
surface of my memory and I recognized Siegfried Wagner, 
son of the musician, whose existence I had for the moment 
forgotten. Having glared us into silence, he turned abruptly 
and re-entered the house. 

"Herr Siegfried and his wife and his two children live 
here also," went on the gardener, in a whisper that was 
still harsh and uninviting, "and ..." 

322 




WOMEN CHOPPING UP THE TOPS OF EVERGREEN TREES FOR FUEL AND FODDER 




THE GREAT BREWERIES OF KULMBACH NEARLY ALL STOOD IDLE 



MUSIC STILL HAS CHARMS 

But I was already beating a discreet retreat, resolved to 
make sure of my ground before I marched in upon another 
"museum." 

I turned down the next side-street, passing on the comer 
the house of Herr Chamberlain, the Englishman who mar- 
ried Frau Wagner's daughter, and, farther on, the former 
home of Liszt, not the least of the old lady's acquaintances, 
then unexpectedly found myself again looking in upon the 
Wagner residence. The high brick wall had suddenly 
ended and the iron-grilled fence that followed it disclosed 
flower-gardens and house in their entirety. It was an 
agreeable dwelling-place, certainly, flanked front and rear 
with forest-like parks in which birds sang constantly, 
and set far enough back from the main street so that its 
noises blended together into what, no doubt, the composer 
would have recognized as music. 

But I had no intention of spying upon a private residence. 
I turned my face sternly to the front and hurried on — until 
a sound between a cough and a hiss, twice repeated, called 
my attention once more to the flower-plots behind the grill. 
The aged gardener was worming his way hurriedly toward 
me and beckoning me to wait. When only an upright iron 
bar separated us he whispered hoarsely, still in his curiously 
unwelcoming tone: 

"If you wish to see the Wagner grave, turn down that 
next opening into the park and come back this way through 
it. I will be at the gate to let you in." 

He had the back entrance to the Wagner estate unlocked 
when I reached it and led the way around a mass of flowering 
hushes to the plain flat slab of marble without inscription 
under which the composer lies buried in his own back yard. 
But for the house fifty yards away it would have been 
easy to imagine oneself in the depth of a forest. The old 
gardener considered his fee earned when he had showed me 
the grave, and he answered my questions with cold brevity. 
22 323 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

He had held his present position for thirty-eight years. 
Of course he had known Herr Richard. Hadn't he seen 
and talked with him every day for many years? No, there 
was nothing unusual about him. He was like any other 
rich man, except that he was always making music. It was 
plain that the gardener thought this a rather foolish hobby. 
He spoke of his former master with that slight tinge of 
scorn, mingled with considerable pride at the importance 
of his own position, which servants so often show in dis- 
cussing employers whom the world considers famous, and 
changed the subject as soon as possible to the all-engrossing 
scarcity of food. Even Herr Siegfried and his family suf- 
fered from that, he asserted. He was still grumbling 
hungrily when he pocketed what pewter coins I had left 
and, locking the gate, shiiifled back to his watering-pots. 

The outwardly ugly Wagner opera-house on a hillock 
at the farther end of town was as dismal in its abandonment 
as most cheap structures become that have stood five 
years unoccupied and unrepaired. There was nothing 
to recall the famous singers and the international throngs 
from kings to scrimping schoolma'ams from overseas, who 
had so often gathered here for the annual Wagner festival. 
A few convalescing soldiers lounged under the surrounding 
trees; from the graveled terrace one had an all-embracing 
view of Bayreuth and the rolling hills about it. But only 
a few twittering birds broke the silence of a spot that had 
so often echoed with the strident strains of all the musical 
instruments known to mankind. 

The change from a country town of three thousand 
to a city of thirty thousand emphasized once more the dis- 
advantage, in the matter of food, of the urban dweller. 
The hotel that housed me in Bayreuth swarmed with 
waiters in evening dress and with a host of useless flunkies, 
but its dining-room was no place for a tramp's appetite. 
The scarcity was made all the more oppressive by the 

324 



MUSIC STILL HAS CHARMS 

counting of crumbs and laboriously entering them in a 
ledger, which occupied an imposing personage at the door, 
after the fashion of Europe's more expensive establishments. 
In a Bavarian Gasthaus a dinner of meat, potatoes, bread, 
and perhaps a soup left the most robust guest at peace with 
the world for hours afterward. I ordered the same here, 
but when I had seen the "meat" I quickly concluded not 
to skip the fish course, and the sight of that turned my 
attention once more to the menu-card. When I had made 
way with all it had to offer, from top to bottom, I rose with a 
strong desire to go somewhere and get something to eat. 
It would probably have been a vain quest, in Bayreuth. 
Yet my bill was more than one-fourth as much as the one 
hundred and twenty-four marks I had squandered during my 
first week on the road in Bavaria. 

The hotel personnel was vastly excited at the announce- 
ment of my nationality. To them it seemed to augur 
the arrival of more of my fellow-countrymen, with their well- 
filled purses, to be the rebeginning of the good old days 
when tips showered upon them. Moreover, it gave them 
an opportunity to air their opinions on the "peace of vio- 
lence" and the Allied world in general. They were typically 
German opinions, all carefully tabulated under the custom- 
ary headings. The very errand-boys bubbled over with 
impressions on those unescapable Fourteen Points; they 
knew by heart the reasons why the proposed treaty was 
"inacceptable" and "unfuMlable." But the final attitude 
of all was, "Let's stop this foolish fighting and get back to 
the times of the annual festival and its flocks of tourists." 

The Royal Opera House next door announced a gala 
performance that evening. I got my ticket early, fearful 
of being crowded away from what promised to be my first 
artistic treat in a fortnight. I took pains to choose a seat 
near enough the front to catch each detail, yet far enough 
away from the orchestra not to be deafened by its Wag- 

325 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

nerian roar — and when I arrived the orchestra seemed to 
have been dead for years! The place it should have occu- 
pied was filled with broken chairs and music-racks black 
with age, and resembled nothing so much as grandfather's 
garret. A single light, somewhat more powerful than a 
candle, burned high up under the dome of the house and 
cast faint, weird flickers over its dusty regal splendor. 
For some reason the place was cold as an ice-house, though 
the weather outside was comfortable, and the scattered 
audience shivered audibly in its scanty Ersatz garments. 
It was without doubt the most poorly dressed, unprepossess- 
ing little collection of hearers that I had ever seen gathered 
together in such an edifice. One was reminded not merely 
that the textile-mills of Bayreuth had only paper to work 
with now, but that soap had become an unattainable luxury 
in Germany. Plainly das Volk had taken over the exiled 
king's playhouse for itself. Even the ornate old royal loge 
was occupied by a few patched soldiers and giggling girls 
of the appearance of waitresses. But to what purpose? 
Surely such an audience as this could not find entertain- 
ment in one of Germany's classics! Alas! it was I who had 
been led astray ! The promising title of the play announced 
was mere camouflage. Who perpetrated the incomprehen- 
sible, inane rubbish on which the curtain finally rose, and 
why, are questions I willingly left to the howling audience, 
which dodged back and forth, utterly oblivious of the fact 
that the Royal Opera House had been erected before theater- 
builders discovered that it was easier to see between two 
heads than through one. Surely German Kultur, theatri- 
cally at least, was on the down-grade in Bayreuth. 

A few miles out along a highway framed in apple blos- 
soms next morning I overtook a group of some twenty 
persons. The knapsacks on their backs suggested a party 
of "hamsterers," but as I drew nearer I noted that each 
carried some species of musical instrument. Now and 

326 




TSCHIRN, THE LAST VILLAGE OF BAVARIA, WAS ENTIRELY BLACK, WITH ITS 
SLATE ROOFS AND WALLS 




THE END OF MY GERMAN TRAMP WAS DOWN THROUGH THE AVENUE OF CHEST- 
NUTS INTO WEIMAR 



MUSIC STILL HAS CHARMS 

again the whole group fell to singing and playing as they 
marched, oblivious to the stares of the peasants along the 
way. I concluded that it was my duty to satisfy my 
curiosity by joining them, and did so by a simple little 
ruse, plus the assistance of my kodak. They were a Sdn- 
gerverein from Bayreuth. Each holiday they celebrated 
by an excursion to some neighboring town, and this was 
Himmelsfahrt, or Assumption Day. The members ranged 
from shy little girls of twelve to stodgy men and women of 
fifty. The leader was a blind man, a veteran of the trenches, 
who not only directed the playing and singing, with his 
cane as a baton, but marched briskly along the snaky 
highway without a hint of assistance. 

There were a half-dozen discharged soldiers in the 
glee club, but if anything this increased the eagerness with 
which I was welcomed. Their attitude was almost exactly 
what would be that of a football team which chanced to 
meet a rival player a year or so after disbanding — they were 
glad to compare notes and to amuse themselves by living 
over old times again. For a while I deliberately tried to 
stir up some sign of anger or resentment among them; 
if they had any personal feelings during the contest they 
had now completely faded out of existence. One dwarfish, 
insignificant, whole-hearted little fellow, a mill-hand on 
week-days, had been in the same sector as I during the 
reduction of the St.-Mihiel salient. Unless we misunder- 
stood each other's description of it, I had entered the dugout 
he had lived in for months a few hours after he so hastily 
abandoned it. He laughed heartily at my description of 
the food we had found still on the stove; he had been cook 
himself that morning. Every one knew, he asserted, that 
the St.-Mihiel attack was coming, two weeks before it 
started, but no one had expected it that cold, rainy morning. 
On the strength of the coincidence we had discovered, he 
proposed me as an honorary member of the Verein for the 

327 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

day, and the nomination was quickly and unanimously 
accepted. 

We loafed on through the perfect early-summer morning, 
a soloist striking up on voice and instrument now and then, 
the whole club joining frequently in some old German song 
proposed by the blind leader, halting here and there to sit 
in the shade of a grassy slope, pouring pellmell every mile 
or two into a Gasthaus, where even the shy little girls emptied 
their half -liter mugs of beer without an effort. One of the 
ex-soldiers enlivened the stroll by giving me his unexpurgated 
opinion of the Prussians. They "hogged" everything they 
could lay their hands on, he grumbled. Prussian wounded 
sent to Bavaria had been fed like princes; Bavarians who 
were so unfortunate as to be assigned to hospitals in Prussia — 
he had suffered that misfortune himself — had been treated 
like cattle and robbed even of the food sent them from home. 
He "had no use for" die verdammten Preussen, from any 
viewpoint; it was their "big men" who had started the 
war in the first place, but . . . No, indeed, Bavaria could 
not afford to separate from Prussia. She had no coal of 
her own and she had no seaport. Business interests were 
too closely linked together through all the Empire to make 
separation possible. It would be cutting their own throats. 

Toward noon we reached the village of Neudrossenfeld, 
where the Verein had engaged for the day a rambling old 
country inn, with a spacious dance-hall above an outdoor 
Kegelbahn for those who bowled, and a shady arbor over- 
looking a vast stretch of rolling summer landscape for those 
who did not, in the garden at the rear. Other glee clubs, 
from Kulmbach and another neighboring city, had occupied 
the other two Gasthduser and every even semi-public estab- 
lishment. The town resounded from one end to the other 
with singing and playing, with laughter and dancing, with 
the clatter of ninepins and the rattle of table utensils. A 
lone stranger without glee-club standing would have been 

328 



MUSIC STILL HAS CHARMS 

forced to plod on, hungry and thirsty. I spent half the 
afternoon in the shady arbor. Several of the girls were well 
worth looking at; the music, not being over-ambitious, 
added just the needed touch to the languid, sun-flooded day. 
One could not but be struck by the innocence of these 
typically Bavarian pleasures. Not a suggestion of rowdy- 
ism, none of the questionable antics of similar gatherings 
in some other lands, marred the amusements of these child- 
like holiday-makers. They were as gentle-mannered as 
the tones of the guitars, zithers, and mandolins they 
thrummed so diligently, with never a rude word or act even 
toward hangers-on like myself. Yet there was a bit less 
gaiety than one would have expected. Even the youthful 
drifted now and then into moods of sadness — or was it mere 
apathy due to their long lack of abundant wholesome food? 

The philosophical old landlord brought us a word of wisdom 
with each double-handful of overflowing beer-mugs. "If 
ever the world gets reasonable again," he mused, "the 
good old times will come back — and we shall be able to serve 
real beer at the proper price. But what ideas people get 
into their Schddels nowadays! They can never let well 
enough alone. The moment man gets contented, the 
moment he has everything as it should be, he must go and 
start something and tumble it all into a heap again." 

A rumor broke out that cookies were being sold across 
the street. I joined the foraging-party that quickly fled 
from the arbor. When we reached the house of the enter- 
prising old lady who had mothered this brilliant idea it was 
packed with clamoring humanity like the scene of the latest 
crime of violence. At intervals a glee-clubber catapulted 
out of the mob, grinning gleefully and tenaciously clutching 
in one hand a paper sack containing three of the precious 
Kuchen, but even with so low a ration the producer could 
not begin to make headway against the feverish demands. 
I decided that I could not justly add my extraneous com- 

329 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

petition in a contest that meant so much more to others and, 
taking my leave of the Sdngerverein, struck off again to the 
north. 

A middle-aged baker from Kulmbach, who had been 
"hamstering" all day, with slight success, fell in with me. 
He had that pathetic, uncomplaining manner of so many 
of his class, seeming to lay his misfortunes at the door of 
some power too high to be reached by mere human protest. 
The war had left him one eye and a weakened physique. 
Two Ersatz teeth gleamed at me dully whenever his wan 
smile disclosed them. He worked nights, and earned forty- 
eight marks a week. That was eighteen more than he had 
been paid before the war, to be sure, and the hours were 
a bit shorter. But how was a man to feed a wife and three 
children on forty-eight marks, with present prices; would 
I tell him that? He walked his legs off during the hours 
he wished to be sleeping, and often came home without 
so much as a potato. There were a dozen or so in his ruck- 
sack now, and he had tramped more than thirty kilometers. 
I suggested that the apples would be large enough on the 
trees that bordered our route to be worth picking in a 
couple of months. He gave me a startled glance, as if I 
had proposed that we rob a bank together. The apples 
along pubHc highways, he explained patiently, were property 
of the state. No one but those the government sent to 
pick them could touch them. True, hunger was driving 
people to strange doings these days. Guards patrolled 
the roads now when the apples began to get ripe. Peasants 
had to protect their potato-fields in the same manner. He, 
however, would remain an honest man, no matter what 
happened to him or to his wife and his three children. 
The apparently complete absence of country police was 
one of the things I had often wondered at during my tramp. 
The baker assured me that none were needed, except in 
harvest time. He had never seen a kodak in action. He 

330 



MUSIC STILL HAS CHARMS 

would not at first believe that it could catch a picture in an 
instant. Surely it would need a half -hour or so to get down 
all the details! Queer people Americans must be, to send 
men out through the world just to get pictures of simple 
country people. Still he wouldn't mind having a trade 
like that himself — if it were not for his wife and his three 
children. 

Kulmbach, noted the world over for its beer, is sur- 
rounded with immense breweries as with a medieval city 
wall. But the majority of them stood idle. The beverages 
to be had in its Gasthduser, too, bore little resemblance to 
the rich Kulmbacher of pre-war days. Thanks perhaps to 
its industrial character, the city of breweries seemed to be 
even shorter of food than Bayreuth; or it may be that its 
customary supply had disappeared diiring the celebration 
of Assumption Day. The meat-tickets I had carried all the 
way from Munich were required here for the first time. 
Some very appetizing little rolls were displayed in several 
shop-windows, but when I attempted to stock up on them 
I found they were to be had in exchange for special Marken, 
issued to Kulmbachers only. There was a more sinister, 
a more surly air about Kulmbach, with its garrison of Prus- 
sian-mannered soldiers housed in a great fortress on a hill 
towering high above the town, than I had thus far found in 
Bavaria. 

As I sat down to an alleged dinner in a self-styled hotel, 
my attention was drawn to a noisy group at a neighboring 
table. I stared in amazement, not so much because the 
five men opposite were Italian soldiers in the uniform with 
which I had grown so familiar during my service on the Pado- 
van plains the summer before, but because of the astonish- 
ing contrast between them and the pale, thin Germans 
about me. The traveler grows quickly accustomed to any 
abnormality of type of the people among whom he is living. 
He soon forgets that they look different from other people — 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

until suddenly the appearance of some really normal being 
in their midst brings his judgment back with a jerk to his 
customary standards. I had grown to think of the Germans, 
particularly the Bavarians, as looking quite fit, a trifle under 
weight perhaps, but healthy and strong. Now all at once, 
in comparison with these ruddy, plump, animated Italians, 
they seemed a nation of invalids. The energetic chatter 
of the visitors brought out in striking relief the listless 
taciturnity of the natives; they talked more in an hour 
than I had ever heard all Germany do in a day. Meanwhile 
they made way with an immense bowlful of — well, what 
would you expect Italians to be eating? Macaroni, of 
course, and with it heaping plates of meat, vegetables, and 
white hard-bread that made the scant fare before me look 
like a phantom meal. I called the landlady aside and 
asked if I might not be served macaroni also. She gave me 
a disgusted look and informed me that she would be glad 
to do so — if I would bring it with me, as the Italians had. 
When I had paid my absurd bill I broke in upon the garru- 
lous southerners. They greeted my use of their tongue 
with a lingual uproar, particularly after I had mentioned 
my nationality, but quickly cooled again with a reference 
to Fiume, and satisfied my curiosity only to the extent of 
stating that they were billeted in Kulmbach "on official 
business." 

I sought to replenish my food-tickets before setting out 
again next morning, but found the municipal Lebensmit- 
telversorgung packed ten rows deep with disheveled house- 
wives. Scientists have figured it out that the htmian body 
loses twice as much fat standing in line the four or five 
hours necessary to obtain the few ounces of grease-products 
issued weekly on the German food ration as the applicant 
receives for his trouble. The housewife, they assert, who 
remains in bed instead of entering the contest gains ma- 
terially by her conservation of energy. In other words, 

332 



MUSIC STILL HAS CHARMS 

apparently, it would have been better for the Fatherland — 
to say nothing of the rest of the world — had the entire 
nation insisted on sleeping during the five years that turned 
humanity topsy-turvy. Millions agree with them. But 
for once the German populace declines to accept the asser- 
tions of higher authorities and persists in wearing itself 
out by its struggles to obtain food. However short-sighted 
this policy may be on the part of the natives, it is certain 
that the tail-end of a multitude besieging a food-ticket dis- 
pensary is no place for a traveler gifted with scant patience 
and a tendency to profanity, and I left Kulmbach behind 
hours before I could have hoped to reach the laborious 
officials who dealt out legal permission to eat. 

A General Staff map in several sheets, openly sold in the 
shops and giving every cowpath of the region, made it 
possible for me to set a course due north by compass over 
the almost mountainous region beyond. "Roads" little 
more deserving the name than those of the Andes led me 
up and down across fertile fields, through deep-wooded 
valleys, and into cozy little country villages tucked away 
in delightful corners of the landscape. Even in these the 
peasant inhabitants complained of the scarcity of food, 
and for the most part declined to sell anything. They 
recalled the South American Indian again in their trans- 
parent ruses to explain the visible presence of foodstuffs. 
Ducks, geese, and chickens, here and there guinea-fowls, 
peacocks, rabbits, not to mention pigs, sheep, and cattle, 
enlivened the village lanes and the surrounding meadows, 
but every suggestion of meat brought from innkeepers and 
shopkeepers clumsy, non-committal replies. At one Gast- 
haus where I had been refused anything but beer I opened by 
design the wrong door at my exit, and stared with amaze- 
ment at four heaping bushel baskets of eggs, a score of grind- 
stone-shaped cheeses, and an abundant suppty of other 
local products that all but completely filled what I had 

333 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

correctly surmised was the family storeroom. "They are 
not ours," exclaimed the landlady, hastily; "they belong 
to others, who will not permit us to sell anything." Her 
competitor across the street was more hospitable, but the 
anticipations I unwisely permitted his honeyed words to 
arouse were sadly wrecked when the "dinner" he promised 
stopped abruptly at a watery soup, with a meager serving 
of real bread and butter. Another village astonished me by 
yielding a whole half-pound of cheese; it boasted a Kiih- 
kdserei — what we might call a "cow cheesery" — that was 
fortunately out of proportion to its transportation facilities. 
Rodach, at the bottom of a deep cleft in the hills where my 
route crossed the main railway line to the south, had several 
by no means empty shops. I canvassed them all without 
reward, except that one less hard-hearted soul granted me 
a scoopful of the mysterious purple "marmalade" which, 
with the possible exception of turnips, seemed to be the only 
plentiful foodstuff in Germany. But has the reader ever 
carried a pint of marmalade, wrapped in a sheet of porous 
paper, over ten miles of mountainous byways on a warm 
summer afternoon? If not, may I not be permitted to 
insist, out of the fullness of experience, that it is far wiser 
to swallow the sickly stuff on the spot, without hoping in 
vain to find bread to accompany it, or, indeed, to smear it 
on some convenient house-wall, than to undertake that 
hazardous feat? 

In short, my travels were growing more and more a con- 
stant foraging expedition, with success never quite over- 
hauling appetite. The country, indeed, was changing in 
character, and with it the inhabitants. I had entered a 
region noted for its slate quarries, and in place of the attrac- 
tive little villages, with their red- tile roofs and masses of 
flowering bushes, there came dismal, slate-built black 
hamlets, almost treeless in setting and peopled by less 
progressive, more slovenly citizens. The only public hostess 

334 



MUSIC STILL HAS CHARMS 

of Lahm refused to take me in for the night because her hus- 
band was not at home, a circumstance for which I was duly 
thankful after one glimpse of her slatternly household. A 
mile or more farther on my eyes were drawn to an unusual 
sight. An immense rounded hillock ahead stood forth in 
the sunset like an enameled landscape painted in daring 
lilac-purple hues. When I reached it I found acres upon 
acres closely grown with that species of wild pansy which 
American children call "snap-heads." Similar fields fol- 
lowed, until the entire country-side had taken on the same 
curious color, and the breeze blowing across it carried to 
the nostrils a perfume almost overpowering in its intensity. 
They were not, as I supposed, meadows lying fallow and 
overrun with a useless, if attractive, weed, but another 
example of the German's genius for discovering Ersatz 
species of nourishment. Sown like wheat in the spring, the 
flowers were harvested, stem and all, in the autumn, and 
sent to Hamburg to be made into "tea." 

Effelter was as black as any African tribe, but its Gasthaus 
was homelike enough within. By the time darkness had 
thoroughly fallen its every table was closely surrounded 
by oxlike, hob-nailed countrymen who had stamped in, 
singly or in small groups, as the last daylight faded away. 
The innkeeper and his family strove in vain to keep every 
mug filled, and sprinkled the floor from end to end with 
drippings of beer. The town was Catholic. While the 
church-bell tolled the end of evening vespers, the entire 
gathering sat silently, with bared heads, as is the Bavarian 
custom, but once the tolling had ceased they did not resume 
their interrupted conversation. Instead they rose as one 
man and, each carrying his beer-mug, filed solemnly across 
the hallway into an adjoining room. The landlord dis- 
appeared with them, and I was left entirely alone, except 
for one homy -handed man of fifty at my own table. He 
slid bit by bit along the bench on which we both sat, until 

335 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

his elbow touched mine, and entered into conversation by- 
proffering some remark in the crippled dialect of the 
region about the close connection between crops and 
weather. 

From the adjoining room rose sounds of untrained oratory, 
mingled with the dull clinking of beer-mugs. The innkeeper 
and his family had by no means abandoned their service of 
supply ; they had merely laid out a new line of communica- 
tion between spigots and consumers. Gradually the orderly 
discussion became a dispute, then an uproar in which a 
score of raucous voices joined. I looked questioningly at 
my companion. 

"They are electing a new Burgemeister," he explained, 
interrupting a question he was asking about the "peasants" 
of America. "It is always a fight between the Burger and 
the Arheiter — the citizens and the workers — in which the 
workers always win in the end." 

One could easily surmise in which class he claimed mem- 
bership by the scornful tone in which he pronounced the 
word "citizen." 

"I live in another town," he added, when I expressed 
surprise that he remained with me in the unlighted Gast- 
zimmer instead of joining his fellows. 

I slipped out into the hallway and glanced in upon the 
disputants. A powerful young peasant stood in an open 
space between the tables, waving his beer-mug over his head 
with a gesture worthy of the Latin race, at the same time 
shouting some tirade against the "citizens." An older man, 
somewhat better dressed, pounded the table with his empty 
glass and bellowed repeatedly: ''Na, da' is' giene Wahrhied! 
Da' is' giene Wahrhied, na!" The other twoscore electors 
sipped their beer placidly and added new clouds to the blue 
haze of tobacco smoke that already half hid the gathering, 
only now and then adding their voices to the dispute. It 
was evident that the youthful Arheiter had the great majority 

336 



MUSIC STILL HAS CHARMS 

with him. As I turned away, my eyes caught a detail of 
the election that had so far escaped my attention. In a 
comer of the hallway, huddled closely together, stood a 
score or more of women, dressed in the gloomy all-black of 
church service, peering curiously into the room where their 
husbands smoked, drank, and disputed, and preserving the 
most absolute silence. 

I mentioned the detail to my companion of the guest- 
room, recalling frequent assertions by Germans in a posi- 
tion to know that the women had been quick to take ad- 
vantage of the granting of equal suffrage to both sexes by 
the new "republican" government. 

"Certainly," he replied, "they have the right to vote, 
but the German Frau has not lost her character. She is 
still satisfied to let her man speak for her. Oh yes, to be 
sure, in the large cities there are women who insist on voting 
for themselves. But then, in the cities there are women 
who insist on smoking cigarettes ! ' ' 

In contrast with this conservative, rural viewpoint I 
have been assured by persons worthy of credence that in 
the more poptilous centers some 80 per cent, of the women 
flocked to the polls for the first election in which suffrage 
was granted them. 

An Arbeiter was eventually elected burgmaster of Ef- 
felter, as the non-resident had prophesied, but not until 
long after I had retired to a bedroom above the place of 
meeting. The vocal uproar intruded for some time upon 
my dreams and mingled fantastically with them. From the 
dull clinking of mugs that continued far into the night it 
was easy to surmise that the evening election turned out 
to the complete satisfaction, at least, of the innkeeper and 
his family. 

My route next morning lay along the top of a high pla- 
teau, wooded in places, but by no means such an Andean 
wilderness of forest and mountain as that which spread 

337 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

away to the horizon on the left, across a great chasm, in the 
direction of Teuschnitz. Black hills of slate stood here 
and there tumbled together in disorderly heaps. Tschirn, 
the last town of Bavaria, laid out on a bare sloping hillside 
as if on display as a curiosity in the world's museum, was 
jet-black from end to end. Not merely were its walls and 
roofs covered with slate, but its very foundations and 
cobblestones, even the miniature lake in its outskirts, were 
slate-black in color. 

It was in Tschirn that I discovered I had been "over- 
looking a bet" on the food question — experience, alas! so 
often arrives too late to be of value! The innkeepess to 
whom I murmured some hint about lunch shook her head 
without looking up from her ironing, but a moment later 
she added, casually: 

"You passed the butcher's house a few yards down the 
hill, and to-day is Saturday." 

The last day of the week, I had been slow in discovering, 
was meat day in most of the smaller towns of Germany. 
I grasped at the hint and hastened down to the slate-faced 
Metzgerei. As I thrust my head in at the door, the Fal- 
staffian butcher paused with his cleaver in the air and rum- 
bled, "Ha! Ein ganz Fremder!" ("A total stranger"). The 
carcass of a single steer was rapidly disappearing under his 
experienced hands into the baskets of the citizens who 
formed a line at the home-made counter. As each received 
his portion and added his meat-tickets to the heap that 
already overflowed a cigar-box, the butcher marked a 
name off the Hst that lay before him. I drew out the 
Anmeldungskarte I had received in Berlin, by no means 
hopeful that it would be honored in a Bavarian mountain 
village. The butcher glanced at it, read the penciled 
"Dauernd auf Reise'' ("Always traveling") at the top, and 
handed it back to me. The regulations required that I 
present the document to the Biirgermeister, who would issue 

338 



MUSIC STILL HAS CHARMS 

me meat-tickets to be in turn handed to the butcher; but 
it happened that the Burgermeister and butcher of Tschim 
were one and the same person. 

"Amerikaner, eh!" he cried, hospitably, at once giving 
me precedence over his fellow-townsmen, whose stares had 
doubled at the revelation of my nationality. "Na, they 
say it is always meat day in America!" 

He carefully selected the best portion of the carcass, 
cut it through the center to get the choicest morsel, and 
slashed off an appetizing tenderioin that represented the 
two hundred grams of the weekly meat ration of Tschim so 
exactly that the scales teetered for several seconds. Then 
he added another slice that brought the weight up to a 
generous half-pound and threw in a nubbin of suet for 
good measure. 

"Making just two marks," he announced, wrapping it up 
in a sheet of the local newspaper. "That wiU put kick in 
your legs for a day or two — if you watch the cook that 
prepares it for you." 

There was nothing to indicate where Bavaria ended and 
Saxe-Weimar began, except the sudden appearance of blue 
post-boxes instead of yellow, and the change in beer. This 
jumped all at once from sixteen pfennigs a mug to twenty- 
five, thirty, and, before the day was done, to forty, at the 
same time deteriorating in size and quality so rapidly that 
I took to patronizing hillside springs instead of wayside 
taverns. At the first town over the border I found the 
municipal ration official at leisure and laid in a new supply 
of food-tickets. My week's allowance of butter, sugar, 
and lard I bought on the spot, since those particular Mar ken 
were good only in specified local shops. The purchases 
did not add materially to the weight of my knapsack. I 
confess to having cheated the authorities a bit, too, for I 
had suddenly discovered a loophole in the iron-clad German 
rationing system. The jolly butcher-mayor of Tschim 
23 339 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

had neglected to note on my "travel-sheet" the tenderloin 
he had issued me. Meat-tickets were therefore furnished 
with the rest — and I accepted them without protest. Had 
all officials been as obliging as he I might have played the 
same passive trick in every town I passed. But the clerks 
of the Saxe- Weimar municipality decorated my precious 
document in a thoroughly German manner with the in- 
formation that I had been supplied all the tickets to which 
I was entitled for the ensuing week. That Saturday, how- 
ever, was a Gargantuan period, and a vivid contrast to the 
hungry day before; for barely had I received this new 
collection of Marken when an innkeeper served me a gener- 
ous meat dinner without demanding any of them. 

A tramp through the Thuringian highlands, with their 
deep, blackwooded valleys and glorious hilltops bathed 
in the cloudless sunshine of early summer, their flower- 
scented breezes and pine-perfimied woodlands, would con- 
vert to pedestrianism the most sedentary of mortals. Laasen 
was still slate-black, like a village in deep mourning, but 
the next town, seen far off across a valley in its forest frame, 
was gay again imder the familiar red-tile roofs. With 
simset I reached Saalfeld, a considerable city in a broad 
lowland, boasting a certain grimy industrial progress and 
long accustomed to batten on tourists. In these untraveled 
days it was sadly down at heel, and had a grasping dis- 
position that made it far less agreeable than the simple little 
towns behind that earn their own honest living. Food, of 
course, was scarce and poor, and, as is always the case, 
the more one paid for it the more exacting was the demand 
for tickets. A hawk-faced hostess charged me twice as 
much for boiling the meat I had brought with me as I had 
paid for it in Tschirn. 

Sunday had come again. The cities, therefore, were all 
but forsaken and my hob-nails echoed resoundingly through 
the stone-paved streets. Their inhabitants one found 

340 



MUSIC STILL HAS CHARMS 

miles beyond, "hamstering" the country-side or holidaying 
with song, dancing, and beer in the Httle villages higher up 
among the hills. The habitual tramp, however, was no- 
where to be seen; the Great War has driven him from the 
highways of Europe. An occasional band of gipsies, 
idling about their little houses on wheels, in some shaded 
glen, or peering out through their white-curtained windows, 
were the only fellow-vagabonds I met during all my German 
tramp. I talked with several of them, but they were un- 
usually wary of tongue, taking me perhaps for a government 
spy; hence there was no way of knowing whether their 
fiery-eyed assertion of patriotism was truth or pretense. 

My last village host was a man of far more culture than 
the average peasant innkeeper. In his youth he had 
attended the Real Schule of Weimar. But Germany is not 
America in its opportunity to climb the ladder of success 
irrespective of caste and origin, and he had drifted back to 
his turnip-fields and a slattern household strangely out of 
keeping with his clear- thinking mental equipment. He 
had gone through the entire war as a private, which fact 
of itself was a striking commentary on the depressing 
caste system of the German army. Yet there was not the 
slightest hint in his speech or manner to suggest that he 
resented what would have been branded a crying injustice 
in a more democratic land. A society of solidified strata 
he seemed to find natural and unavoidable. The goddess 
of chance had been more kind to him than had his fellow- 
men. Four unbroken years he had served in the trenches, 
on every front, yet though he towered 1.87 meters aloft, 
or an inch above the regulation German parapet, his only 
wound was a tiny nick in the lobe of an ear. Gas, how- 
ever, had left him hollow-chested and given him, during his 
frequent spasms of coughing, a curious resemblance to a 
shepherd's crook. 

The thoroughness with which Germany utilized her 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

man-power during the war was personified in this human 
pine-tree of the Weimar hills. He had been granted just 
two furloughs — of six and fourteen days, respectively. 
Both of them he had spent in his fields, laboring from dawn 
to dark, for, as he put it, "the women were never able to 
keep up with the crops." His only grievance against fate, 
however, was the setback it had given the education of 
his children. Since 1914 his boys had received only four 
hours of schooling a week — as to the girls he said nothing, 
as if they did not matter. The teachers had all gone to war; 
the village pastor had done his best to take the place of 
six of them. Women, he admitted, might have made 
tolerable substitutes, but in Germany that was not the 
custom and they had never been prepared to teach. The 
optimistic American attitude of overlooking the lack of 
specific preparation when occasion demanded has no cham- 
pions in the Fatherland, where professions, as well as trades, 
are taken with racial seriousness. The end of the war, he 
complained, with the only suggestion of bitterness he dis- 
played during a long evening, had found him with a son 
"going on twelve" who could barely spell out the simplest 
words and could not reckon up the cost of a few mugs of 
beer without using his fingers. 



XVI 

FLYING HOMEWARD 

THE next afternoon found me descending the great av- 
enue of chestnuts, white then with blossoms, that leads 
from the Belvedere into the city of Weimar. The period 
was that between two sittings of the National Assembly 
in this temporary capital of the new German Volksreich, 
and the last residence of Goethe, had sunk again into its 
normal state — that of a leisurely, dignified, old provincial 
town, more engrossed with its local cares than with problems 
of world-wide significance. Self-seeking "representatives 
of the people," frock- tailed bureaucrats, scurrying corre- 
spondents from the four comers of the earth and the flocks 
of hangers-on which these unavoidable appendages of 
modem society inevitably bring in their train, had all fled 
Berlinward. Weimar had been restored to her own simple 
people, except that one of her squares swarmed with the 
Jews of Leipzig, who had set up here their booths for an 
annual fair and awakened all the surrounding echoes with 
their strident bargainings. 

The waiter who served me in a hotel which the fleeing 
Assembly had left forlorn and gloomy was a veteran Feld- 
webel and a radical Socialist. The combination gave his 
point of view curious twists. He raged fiercely against the 
lack of discipline of the new German army of volunteers. 
The damage they had done to billets they had recently 
abandoned he pictured to me with tears in his watery eyes. 

343 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

Did I imagine the men who served under him had ever 
dared commit such depredations? Could I believe for an 
instant that his soldiers had ever passed an officer without 
saluting him? Ausgeschlossen! He would have felled the 
entire company, like cattle in a slaughter-house ! Yet in the 
same breath he gave vent to Utopian theories that implied 
a human perfection fit for thrumming harps on the golden 
stairs of the dreary after-world of the theologians. Man 
in the mass, he asserted, was orderly and obedient, ready 
to make his desires subservient to the welfare of society. 
It was only the few evil spirits in each gathering who stirred 
up the rest to deeds of communal misfortune. The mass of 
workmen wished only to pursue their labors in peace; but 
the evil spirits forced them to strike. Soldiers, even the 
volunteer soldiers of the new order of things that was 
breaking upon the world, wished nothing so much as to be 
real soldiers; but they were led astray by the fiends in 
human form among them. These latter must be segregated 
and destroyed, root and branch. 

I broke in upon his dreams to ask if he could not, perhaps, 
round up a pair of eggs somewhere. 

"Eggs, my dear sir!" he cried, raising both arms aloft and 
dropping them inertly at his sides. "Before the National 
Assembly came to Weimar we bought them anywhere for 
thirty pfennigs, or at most thirty -five. Then came the 
swarms of politicians and bureaucrats — it is the same old 
capitalistic government, for all its change of coat — every 
last little one of them with an allowance of thirty marks a 
day for expenses, on top of their generous salaries. It is 
a lucky man who finds an egg in the whole dukedom now, 
even if he pays two marks for it." 

My German tramp ended at Weimar. Circumstances 
required that I catch a steamer leaving Rotterdam for 
the famous port of Hoboken three days later, and to accom- 
plish that feat meant swift movement and close connections. 

344 



FLYING HOMEWARD 

The most rapid, if not the most direct, route lay through 
Berhn. Trains are never too certain in war-time, however, 
and I concluded to leave the delay-provoking earth and 
take to the air. 

There was a regular airplane mail service between Weimar 
and Berlin, three times a day in each direction, with room 
for a passenger or two on each trip. The German may 
not forgive his enemies, but he is quite ready to do business 
with them, to clothe them or to fly them, to meet any 
demand of a possible customer, whatever his origin. He 
still tempers his manners to outward appearances, however, 
for the great leaden god of caste sits heavily upon him, in 
spite of his sudden conversion to democracy. Turn up 
at his office in tramping garb and you are sure to be received 
like the beggar at the gate. Whisper in his ear that you 
are prepared to pay four hundred and fifty marks for the 
privilege of sitting two hours in his airplane express and 
he grovels at your feet. 

The price was high, but it would have been several times 
more so for those unable to buy their marks at the foreign 
rate of exchange. A swift military automobile called for 
me at the hotel next morning, picking up a captain in mufti 
next door, who welcomed me in a manner befitting the 
ostensible fatness of my purse. On the way to the flying- 
field, several miles out, we gathered two youthful lieutenants 
in civilian garb and slouchy caps, commonplace in appear- 
ance as professional truck-drivers. The captain intro- 
duced me to them, emphasizing my nationality, and stating 
that they were the pilot and pathfinder, respectively, who 
were to accompany me on my journey. They raised their 
caps and bowed ceremoniously. The pilot had taken part 
in seven raids on Paris and four on London, but the biplane 
that was already fanning the air in its eagerness to be off 
had seen service only on the eastern front. It still bore 
all the military markings and a dozen patched bullet-holes 

345 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

in wings and tail. The captain turned me over to a middle- 
aged woman in an anteroom of the hangar, who tucked me 
solicitously into a flying-suit, that service being included 
in the price of the trip. 

Flying had become so commonplace an experience that 
this simple journey warrants perhaps no more space than a 
train-ride. Being my own first departure from the solid 
earth, however, it took on a personal interest that was 
enhanced by the ruthlessness with which my layman impres- 
sions were shattered. I had always supposed, for instance, 
that passengers of the air were tucked snugly into uphol- 
stered seats and secured from individual mishap by some 
species of leather harness. Not at all ! When my knapsack 
had been tossed into the cockpit — where there was room for 
a steamer-trunk or two — the pathfinder motioned to me to 
climb in after it. I did so, and gazed about me in amaze- 
ment. Upholstered seats indeed! Two loose boards, a 
foot wide and rudely gnawed off on the ends by some species 
of Ersatz saw, teetered insecurely on the two frail strips 
of wood that half concealed the steering- wires. Now and 
then, during the journey, they slipped off at one end or the 
other, giving the ride an annoying resemblance to a jolting 
over country roads in a farm wagon. One might at least 
have been furnished a cushion, at two hundred and twenty- 
five marks an hour ! 

The pathfinder took his seat on one of the boards and I 
on the other. Behind me was a stout strap, attached to 
the framework of the machine. 

"I suppose I am to put this around me?" I remarked, as 
casually as possible, picking up the dangling strip of leather. 

"Oh no, you won't need that," replied m^^ companion 
of the cockpit, absently. "We are not going high; not over 
a thousand meters or so." He spoke as if a Httle drop of 
that much would do no one any harm. 

The silly notion flashed through my head that perhaps 

.^46 



FLYING HOMEWARD 

these wicked Huns were planning to flip me out somewhere 
along the way, an absurdity which a second glance at the 
pathfinder's seat, as insecure as my own, smothered in ridi- 
cule. There was no mail and no other passenger than myself 
that morning. Regular service means just that, with the 
German, and the flight would have started promptly at 
nine even had I not been there to offset the cost of gasolene 
at two dollars a quart. We roared deafeningly, crawled a 
few yards, sped faster and faster across a long field, the tall 
grass bowing prostrate as we passed, rose imperceptibly 
into the air and, circling completely around, sailed majesti- 
cally over a tiny toy house that had been a huge hangar 
a moment before, and were away into the north. 

Like all long-imagined experiences this one was far less 
exciting in realization than in anticipation. At the start 
I felt a slight tremor, about equal to the sensation of turn- 
ing a corner a bit too swiftly in an automobile. Now and 
then, as I peered over the side at the shrunken earth, the 
reflection flashed upon me that there was nothing but 
air for thousands of feet beneath us; but the thought was 
no more terrifying than the average person feels toward 
water when he first sails out to sea. By the time Weimar 
had disappeared I felt as comfortably at home as if I had 
been seated on the floor of a jolting box-car — the parallel 
is chosen advisedly. I glanced through the morning paper, 
scribbled a few belated notes, and exchanged casual remarks 
in sign language with my companion. 

The roar of the machine made conversation impossible. 
Whenever a new town of any importance appeared on the 
animated relief map far below us, the pathfinder thrust a 
thumb downward at it and pointed the place out on the 
more articulate paper map in his hands. The view was much 
the same as that from the brow of a high mountain. I 
knew a dozen headlands in the Andes below which the 
world spread out in this same entrancing entirety, except 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

that here the performance was continuous rather than 
stationary, as a cinema film is different from a "still" 
picture. To say that the earth lay like a carpet beneath 
would be no trite comparison. It resembled nothing so 
much as that — a rich Persian carpet worked with all man- 
ner of fantastic figures ; unless it more exactly imitated the 
"crazy-quilt" of our grandmothers' day, with the same 
curiously shaped patches of every conceivable form and 
almost every known color. Here were long narrow strips 
of brilliant green; there, irregular squares of flowery purple- 
red; beyond, mustard-yellow insets of ridiculously mis- 
shapen outlines; farther off, scraps of daisy -white, and be- 
tween them all velvety brown patches that only experience 
could have recognized as plowed fields. I caught myself 
musing as to how long it would be before enterprising man- 
kind took to shaping the surface of the earth to commercial 
purposes, advising the airmen by the form of the meadows 
to "Stop at Miiller's for gas and oil," or to "See Smith for 
wings and propellers." All the scraps of the rag-bag had 
been utilized by the thrifty quilt-maker. Corn-fields looked 
like stray bits of green corduroy cloth; wheat-fields like the 
remnants of an old khaki uniform; the countless forests 
like scattered pieces of the somber garb cast off after the 
period of family mourning was over; rivers like sections of 
narrow, faded-black tape woven fantastically through the 
pattern in ridiculously snaky attempts at decorative effect. 
Here and there the carpet was moth-eaten — where a crop of 
hay had recently been gathered. A forest that had lately 
been turned into telegraph poles seemed a handful of matches 
spilled by some careless smoker; ponds and small lakes, the 
holes burned by the sparks from his pipe. 

We had taken a rough road. Like all those inexperienced 
with the element, I suppose, I had always thought that 
flying through the air would be smoother than sailing the 
calmest sea known to the tropical doldrums. 

348 



FLYING HOMEWARD 

Experience left another illusion ruthlessly shattered. It 
was a fitful, blustery day, with a high wind that rocked 
and tossed us about like a dory on a heavy sea; moreover, 
at irregular intervals averaging perhaps a minute apart 
the machine struck an air current that bounced us high off 
our precarious perches in the cockpit as a "thank-you- 
ma'am" tosses into one another's laps the back-seat pas- 
sengers in an automobile. The sickening drop just beyond 
each such ridge in the air road gave one the same unpleasant 
sensation of vacancy in the middle of the body that comes 
with the too sudden descent of an elevator. Particularly 
was this true when the pilot, in jockeying with the playful 
air waves, shut off his motor until he had regained his chosen 
altitude. There may be nothing more serious about a 
faulty carburetor a thousand yards aloft than on the ground, 
but the novice in aerial navigation is apt to listen with 
rapt attention to anything that ever so briefly suggests 
engine trouble. 

Yet none of these little starts reached the height of fear. 
There was something efficient about the ex-raider who sat 
at the controls with all the assurance of a long-experienced 
chauffeur that would have made fright seem absurd. I 
did get cold feet, it is true, but in the literal rather than the 
figurative sense. After a May of unbroken sunshine, early 
June had turned almost bitter cold, and the thin board floor 
of the cockpit was but slight protection against the wintry 
blasts. Every now and then we ran through a rain-storm, 
but so swiftly that barely a drop touched us. Between them 
the sun occasionally flashed forth and mottled the earth- 
carpet beneath with fleeing cloud shadows. Now the 
clouds charged past close over our heads, now we dived 
headlong into them; when we were clear of them they 
moved as does a landscape seen from a swift train — those 
near at hand sped swiftly to the rear, those farther off rode 
slowly forward, seeming to keep pace with us. Villages 

349 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

by the score were almost constantly visible, reddish-gray 
specks like rosettes embroidered at irregular intervals into 
the carpet pattern. It made one feel like a "Peeping Tom^' 
to look down into their domestic activities from aloft. The 
highways between them seemed even more erratic in their 
courses than on the ground, and aroused still more wonder 
than the pedestrian would have felt as to what excuse they 
found for their strange deviations. Gnatlike men and 
women were everywhere toiling in the fields and only rarely 
ceased their labors to glance upward as we droned by 
overhead. Many enticing subjects for my kodak rode 
tantalizingly southward into the past, emphasizing at 
least one advantage of the tramp over the passenger of 
the air. 

We landed at Leipzig, girdled by its wide belt of "arbor 
gardens," theoretically to leave and pick up mail. But 
as there was none in either direction that morning, the 
halt was really made only to give the pilot time to smoke a 
cigarette. That finished, we were off again, rolling for 
miles across a wheat-field, then leaving the earth as swiftly 
as it had risen up to meet us ten minutes before. Landing 
and departure seem to be the most serious and time-losing 
tasks of the airman, and, once more aloft, the pilot settled 
down with the contentment of a being returned again to its 
native element. As we neared Berlin the scene below 
turned chiefly to sand and forest, with only rare, small 
villages. One broad strip that had been an artillery prov- 
ing-ground was pitted for miles as with the smallpox. To 
my disappointment, we did not fly over the capital, but 
came to earth on the arid plain of Johannesthal, in the 
southernmost suburbs, the sand cutting into our faces like 
stinging gnats as we snorted across it to the cluster of 
massive hangars which the machine seemed to recognize 
as home. My companions took their leave courteously 
but quickly and disappeared within their .billets. Another 

3SO 



FLYING HOMEWARD 

middle-aged woman despoiled me of my flying-togs, re- 
quested me to sign a receipt that I had been duly 
delivered according to the terms of the contract, and a 
swift automobile set me down, still half deaf from the 
roar of the airplane, at the comer of Friedrichstrasse 
and Unter den Linden — as it would have at any other 
part of Berlin I might have chosen — just three hours 
from the time I had been picked up at my hotel in 
Weimar. 

The capital was still plodding along with that hungry 
placidity which I had always foimd there. Surely it is the 
least exciting city of its size in the world, even in the midst 
of wars and revolutions! My total expenses during thirty- 
five days within unoccupied Germany summed up to three 
thousand marks, a less appalling amount than it would 
have been to a German, since the low rate of exchange 
reduced it to barely two hundred and fifty dollars. Of 
this — and the difference is worthy of comment — eighty 
dollars had been spent for food and only sixteen dollars for 
lodging. Transportation had cost me seventy dollars and 
the rest had gone for theater-tickets, photographic supplies, 
and the odds and ends that the traveler customarily picks 
up along the way more or less necessarily. There remained 
in my purse some five hundred marks in war- time "shin- 
plasters," of scant value in the world ahead even were I 
permitted to carry them over the border. Unfortunately 
the best bargains in the Germany of 1919 were just those 
things that cannot be carried away — hotel rooms, railway 
and street-car tickets, public baths, cab and taxi rides, 
theater and opera seats and a few bulky commodities such 
as paper or books. Perhaps a connoisseur might have 
picked up advantageously art treasures, jewels, or the 
curiosities of medieval households, but for one without that 
training there was Httle choice but to follow the lead of all 
Allied officers leaving the capital and invest in a pair of 

351 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

field-glasses. The lenses for which Germany is famous 
had greatly risen in price, but by no means as much as the 
mark had fallen in foreign exchange. 

Only one episode broke the monotony of the swift express 
journey to the Holland border. I gained a seat in the 
dining-car at last, only to discover that the one possibly 
edible dish on the bill of fare cost two marks more than the 
few I had kept in German currency. To change a French 
or Dutch banknote would have meant to load myself down 
a;£^ain with useless Boche paper money. Suddenly a brill- 
iant idea burst upon me. In my bag there was still a 
block or two of the French chocolate which I had wheedled 
oat of the American commissary in Berlin. I dug it up, 
broke off two inch-wide sections, and held them out toward 
a cheerful-looking young man seated on the floor of the 
corridor. 

"Would that be worth two marks to you?" I asked. 

"Two marks!" he shouted, snatching at the chocolate 
with one hand while the other dived for his purse. "Have 
you any more of it to sell? " 

At least a dozen persons of both sexes came to ask me the 
same question before my brief dinner was over. Their 
eagerness aroused a curiosity to know just how much they 
would be willing to pay for so rare a delicacy. I opened 
my bag once more and, taking out the unopened half- 
pound that remained, laid it tantalizingly on the comer of 
my table. If eyes could have eaten, it would have dis- 
appeared more quickly than a scrap thrown among a flock 
of seagulls. When the likelihood of becoming the center 
of a riot seemed imminent, I rose to my feet. 

"Meine Herrschaften," I began, teasingly, "in a few hours 
I shall be in Holland, where chocolate can be had in abun- 
dance. It would be a shame to take this last bar out of a 
country where it is so scarce. It is genuine French choco- 
late, no 'war wares.' So many of you have wished to buy 

352 



FLYING HOMEWARD 

it that I see no just way of disposing of it except to put it 
up at auction." 

"Ah, the true American spirit!" sneered at least a half- 
dozen in the same breath. "Always looking for a chance to 
make money." 

I ignored the sarcastic sallies and asked for bids. The 
offers began at ten marks, rose swiftly, and stopped a 
moment later at twenty-five. To a German that was still 
the equivalent of ten dollars. I regret to report that the 
successful bidder was a disgustingly fat Jewess who seemed 
least in need of nourishment of the entire carload. The 
cheerful-looking young man who had bought the first 
morsels had been eager to carry this prize to the fiancee 
he was soon to see for the first time since demobilization, 
but he had abandoned the race at twenty marks. 

"Now then, meine Damen und Herren" I went on, 
haughtily, when the purchaser had tucked the chocolate 
into her jeweled arm-bag with a sybaritic leer and laid the 
specified sum before me, "I am no war-profiteer, nor have I 
the soul of a merchant. These twenty-five marks I shall 
hand to this gentleman opposite" — he had the appearance 
of one who could safely be intrusted with that amount — 
"with the understanding that he give it to the first grand 
bless^ he meets — the first soldier who has lost an arm, a 
leg, or an eye." 

The expressions of praise that arose on all sides grew 
maudlin. The trustee I had chosen ceremoniously wrote 
his address on a visiting-card and handed it to the Jewess, 
requesting hers in return, and promising to forward a receipt 
signed by the recipient of the "noble American benefac- 
tion." Then he fell into conversation with me, learned 
the purpose that had brought me to Germany, and im- 
plored me to continue to Essen with him, where he was 
connected with the Krupp factories. He would see to it 
that I was received by Herr von Krupp-Bohlen himself — 

353 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

the husband of Prau Bertha whom the Kaiser had permitted 
to saddle himself with the glorious family name — and 
that I be conducted into every comer of the plant, a priv- 
ilege which had been accorded no Allied correspondent 
since the war began. His pleas grew almost tearful in 
spite of my reminder that time and transatlantic steamers 
wait for no man. The world, he blubbered, had a wholly 
false notion of the great Krupps of Essen. They were really 
overflowing with charity. Were they not paying regular 
wages to almost their war- time force of workmen, though 
there was employment for only a small fraction of them? 
It was high time a fair-minded report wiped out the slanders 
that had been heaped upon a noble family and establish- 
ment by the wicked Allied propagandists. Essen at least 
would never be troubled with labor agitators and Sparticist 
uprisings. . . . 

We reached Bentheim on the frontier at four. Most of 
my companions of the chocolate episode had been left 
behind with the change of cars at Lohne, and the coaches 
now disgorged a throng of fat, prosperous-looking Hollanders. 
War and suffering, after all, are good for the soul, one could 
not but reflect, at the sudden change from the adversity- 
tamed Germans to these gross, red-faced, paunchy, over- 
fed Dutchmen, who, though it be something approaching 
heresy to say so, perhaps, were far less agreeable to every 
sense, who had something in their manner that suggested 
that their acquaintance was not worth cultivating. My 
last chance for a German adventure had come. Unless the 
frontier officials at Bentheim visited their wrath upon me 
in some form or other, my journey through the Fatherland 
would forever remain like the memory of a Sunday-school 
picnic in the crater of an extinct volcano — a picnic to which 
most of the party had neglected to bring their lunch-baskets, 
and where the rest had spilled their scant fare several 
times in the sand and ashes along the way. 

354 



FLYING HOMEWARD 

The same dapper young lieutenant and grizzled old 
sergeant of five weeks before still held the station gate. 
Apparently neither of them recognized me as a former 
acquaintance. At any rate, they showed no curiosity to 
know how I had managed to spend that length of time on a 
little journey to Hamburg. Perhaps the stamp of the 
Foreign Office on my passport left them no choice but to 
hold their peace. The customs inspector was a bit more 
inquisitive. He rummaged through my hamper with the 
manner of one accustomed to do his duty to the letter, 
at the same time desiring to know how much German 
money the gentleman was carrying with him. A placard 
on the wall warned travelers that no gold, only three marks 
in silver, and not more than fifty marks in paper could be 
taken out of the coimtry. Those who had more than that 
amount were the losers, for though the frontier guards gave 
French or Dutch paper in return for what they took away, it 
was at a far less a*dvantageous rate of exchange than that in 
the open market. The inspector accepted my assertion of 
marklessness without question, but in the mean time he 
had brought to light the spiked helmet that had been given 
me in Schwerin. His face took on an expression of puzzled 
amusement. 

"So! You are taking it with you?" he chuckled, in a 
tone implying the belief that it had decorated my own head 
during the war. 

"It was given me as a souvenir," I replied. "I am an 
American." 

"So!" he rumbled again, looking up at me with an air 
of surprise — ' ' American ! " 

He turned the helmet over several times in his hands, 
apparently deep in thought, then tucked it down into the 
hamper again and closed the lid. 

"We-ell," he said, slowly, "take it along. We don't need 
them any more." 

355 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

There was but one barrier left between me and freedom. 
Judging from the disheveled appearance of the fat Hol- 
landers who emerged, after long delay in every case, from 
the little wooden booths along the wall, the personal search 
that awaited me would be exacting and thorough. One 
could not expect them to take my word for it that I had 
no German money or other forbidden valuables concealed 
about my person. Yet that was exactly what they did. 
True, five weeks of knocking about in a "hand-me-down" 
that had been no fit costume for attending a court function 
in the first place had not left me the appearance of a walking 
treasury. But frontier officials commonly put less faith 
in the outward aspect of their victims than did the courteous 
German soldier who dropped his hands at his sides as I 
mentioned my nationality and opened the door again with- 
out laying a finger upon me. 

"Happy journey," he smiled, as I turned away, "and — 
and when you get back to America tell them to send us 
more food." 

My last hope of adventure had faded away, and Germany 
lay behind me. At Oldenzaal the Dutch were more exact- 
ing in their formalities than their neighbors had been, but 
they admitted me without any other opposition than the 
racial leisureliness that caused me to miss the evening train. 
A stroll through the frontier village was like walking through 
a teeming market-place after escape from a desert island. 
The shop -windows bulged with every conceivable species 
of foodstuffs — heaps of immense fat sausages, suspended 
carcasses of well-fed cattle, calves, sheep, and hogs, huge 
wooden pails of butter, overflowing baskets of eggs, hillocks 
of chocolate and sweets of every description, countless 
cans of cocoa. ... I had almost forgotten that nature, 
abetted by industry, supplied mankind with such abundance 
and variety of appetizing things. I restrained with diffi- 
ciilty my impulse to buy of everything in sight. 

3S6 



FLYING HOMEWARD 

At the hotel that evening the steak that was casually 
set before me would have instigated a riot in Berlin. More- 
over, it was surrounded by a sea of succulent gravy. I 
could not recall ever having seen a drop of gravy 
in all Germany. When I paid my bill, bright silver coins 
were handed me as change. A workman across the room 
lighted a fat cigar as nonchalantly as if they grew on the 
trees outside the window. Luxurious private automobiles 
rolled past on noiseless rubber tires. 

In the train next morning the eye was instantly attracted 
to the window-straps of real leather, to the perfect con- 
dition of the seat-cushions. A German returning to his 
pre-war residence in Buenos Aires with his Argentine wife 
and two attractive daughters, whom I had met at table the 
evening before, insisted that I share his compartment with 
them. He had spent three months and several thousand 
marks to obtain his passports, and the authorities at the 
border had forced him to leave behind all but the amount 
barely sufficient to pay his expenses to his destination. 
The transplanted wife was far more pro-German in her 
utterances than her husband, and flayed the "wicked 
Allies" ceaselessly in her fiery native tongue. During all 
the journey the youngest daughter, a girl of sixteen whose 
unqualified beauty highly sanctioned this particular mixt- 
ure of races, sat huddled together in her comer like a 
statue of bodily suffering. Only once that morning did 
she open her faultless lips. At my expression of solicitude 
she turned her breath-taking countenance toward me and 
murmured in a tone that made even German sound musical : 

"You see, we have not been used to rich food in Germany 
since I was a child, and— and last night I ate so much!" 

The stern days of the Kaiser's regime, with their depress- 
ing submergence of personal liberty, would seem to have 
faded away. During all my weeks of wandering at large 
throughout the Fatherland not once did a guardian of the 

357 



VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY 

law so much as whisper in my ear. In contrast, during 
twenty-four hours in Holland I was twice taken in charge 
by detectives — ^it seems they were looking for a "bird" 
named Vogel — once in the streets of Oldenzaal and again 
as I descended from the train at Rotterdam. 



THE END 



